Sanctuary and Asylum 66
by Negative-Z
Summary: And Tenchi's direction moves as Tenchi's voice. And Tenchi's perception is still Tenchi's choice.
1. Verse Six is Monster

Sanctuary & Asylum {.66}  
  
Forward-Forewarned:  
  
***  
  
And Tenchi's direction---moves as Tenchi's voice.  
  
And Tenchi's perception---is still Tenchi's choice.  
  
***  
  
Another synopsis verse naturally deserves another explanation, but first let's quicken some questions:  
  
1.) Will readers be able to appreciate the story from here if they haven't already absorbed Sanctuary&Asylum[.33]?  
  
2.) Is it original to 'pace' the story to lure in readers who may be hesitant to catch up on chapters?  
  
3.) Does the author have any ulterior motives above a preoccupation with the number 3?  
  
The answer to all these questions...  
  
is 'no'.  
  
Before I explain further I must first thank new readers for their curiosity while also thanking old readers for their patience. The verse's meanings should be clearer in the context of all that has happened, just as it seems comparatively more direct. Rather than replace the first, this next synopsis adds on to themes of fortune and regret by suggesting a connection between the ways choices speak and perceptions are chosen. Tenchi and his family will thus be further confronted with the hidden costs of an open mind.  
  
Standard Disclaimer:  
  
I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.  
  
Standard Advertisement:  
  
I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.  
  
Standard Procedure:  
  
Give credit where credit is due.  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Six is Monster-  
  
-Part 1-  
  
The lure of the grotesque---need not imply destruction.  
  
Meeting new cruelties---requires no introduction.  
  
-ZJS  
  
Deja vu snapped Tenchi out of his breakfast trance. Some scene between the alien themed word-find and looking over at Washu's closet door struck him as familiar, or planned. The moment passed and he shrugged it off to scrape his bowl. It had been hard to convince Sasami that he didn't have time to eat more than a little cereal, but he told himself it would be worth it to be able to walk to the bus stop rather than jog to it.  
  
"You really promise?"  
  
"Yes Sasami, I promise I'll eat a huge breakfast on Saturday, okay?" Tenchi doubled checked his school case rather than catch her stern little frown.  
  
"Don't worry Sasami I don't have be on patrol for another..." Mihoshi trailed off into her control cube, looking for the time like a fortune in a murky eight ball.  
  
"Oh no! I'm late again, why-why-why can't I set this alarm right!" After a virtuosi control cube fiddling, she dashed through a specialized portal and into Yukinojo without even saying goodbye.  
  
"I swear that woman is going to forget her head someday." Aeka shook her head down then smiled up. "I hope you have a good day Lord Tenchi."  
  
"You too, Aeka." Tenchi looked over his shoulder with a smile, still warmer from a recent unexpected hug. He turned but paused with the door half opened, bracing himself for Ryoko's next scheme to keep him home. The silence that responded was a little disappointing and more than a little unnerving. Once far enough down the road he checked the roof but found it empty even of a discarded sake bottle.  
  
*Please let her just be sleeping somewhere else, not drunk, not waiting to ambush me, not-  
  
"Hi Tenchi, where ya goin?"  
  
Ryoko leaned casually against one of the guardians, smiling at him and his freshly stretched heart. She had been quieter and less intrusive since their 'date', yet he couldn't envision anything good coming from this checkpoint.  
  
"My first class starts in an hour, I need to get to the bus stop on time. I'll be doing this every weekday for a few more months." Tenchi responded casually, continuing to walk as he spoke and beginning to curse himself for providing an easy-to-follow schedule. He wasn't sure if he ever wanted to take Ryoko out in public again after that last scare, but he knew he wanted to keep her and his academic career as far apart as possible.  
  
"Have a fine day Lord Tenchi."  
  
"Indeed, may all your studies be rewarding."  
  
Tenchi mumbled thanks to the guardians' programmed politeness, still tensing himself for Ryoko's objection.  
  
"Can I walk with you to the bus stop?" A soft voice floated adjacent to him.  
  
For some unexplainable reason Tenchi started to feel flustered. It was far too early to blame the rising heat in his face on the weather, but he'd seen Ryoko levitate on her back plenty of times, and she'd certainly tried to affectionately anchor him from school before. To add to it; a gut knot was tightening with every step and working up a new theory as to how she recovered from drinking binges so well. A less than unlikely explanation, but he slowed his pace and turned. No voodoo in her hopeful pools of gold, but danger nonetheless.  
  
*What if she started flying again near the bus and someone saw her; there'd be snoopers then government agents here in a flash, and if they tried to test her or take her away-  
  
Hardly needing to read the fine mind print, Ryoko settled on her feet again and held her hands.  
  
"Don't worry, I promise I'll act normal." The sudden transition to meekness was hardly believable, in fact to Tenchi it wasn't.  
  
"Uh, Ryoko, actually---the house was kinda messy when I left, could you maybe go give Sasami and the others a hand."  
  
The leather handle on his school case started to feel sticky as he waited for the argument, the pleading, and hopefully not another attempt to fly him to school.  
  
Ryoko looked at the ground, clutching her hands tightly over a mob of potential reasons to help them later. For all their screaming none seemed genuine, and she almost considered severing her own gem-hand and tossing it towards the house for bitter effect. In the end she cleared the crowd with a pitiful sigh.  
  
"Okay, Tenchi."  
  
She phased away before she could be asked again, much less thanked. Tenchi stopped to blink before continuing on, a frown cutting off his own exasperated sigh. He gulped at the knot like an unmentioned side effect even with the placebo now dissolved. It was a beautiful spring morning but he was missing most of the grandeurs, once again consumed with Ryoko- worries. The baggage band paraded through his mind, content to play the same song down the same street. They were so old and difficult to approach that he rolled his eyes and simply waited for them to nag themselves out like a windy professor.  
  
Eventually he was able to look up and appreciate the breeze trapped between clouds of flower pollen and waves of grass. If somebody ever asked he would have to grudgingly admit being glad that Ryoko had moved his house out here. Despite the long walk to the bus stop, peaceful countryside was getting harder to find by the minute these days. It would be difficult for him to live again without a daily dose of nothing but wind through trees, even if interrupted by explosions. He tried to breath in the tranquility around him, staring up at the sky's nearly post-rain brilliance.  
  
What might have been a sound stopped him and threw a pinch of narrow- eyed suspicion over each shoulder; Katshuhito was too fast or not there. A billion amorous insects swallowed up the breeze. He ignored the pre- mechanical buzz and looked closer at each shadow and contour surrounding him, trying to see past objects as his grandfather had instructed. The old man would have made a move by now and would have laughed at him for wishing there were a secret weapon compartment in his school case. It felt slightly invigorating to wait for the master's bokken to all but fall out of the sky and he smiled at a good defense idea, but hoped harder to catch the bus in time.  
  
Heavy breezes drowned the insects again and swirled on either side of him. A tiny piece of tree bark shot back out of his mouth without breaking his concentration. Though obviously formed from nervousness, the returning knot hardly resembled what he'd felt with Ryoko, or with his grandfather. Growing certainty kept him on the defensive but soon he couldn't even guess why. A disoriented and dry nausea made the tendons on his neck tense and he whirled around again, neither surprised nor relieved to see a seven-foot dilation of complete emptiness.  
  
Seita stepped out in a similar yet unsettling parody of how Ryoko looked when she phased through walls. He was wearing the same combination of black pants and crimson shirt that he'd introduced himself in. The knowing smile, the intense blue eyes made chemical over thin eyeliner; each now common flamboyance unsettled Tenchi anew. Though the breeze had died down, a few wisps of hair still billowed gently. The oblivion portal blinked shut behind him and he brought his hands out in a ceremony to his host's lingering tension.  
  
"Did you need this for school today?" He asked calmly, his consideration and Tenchi's forgetfulness pulling up either sides of a smile.  
  
"Huh?" Confusion relaxed him almost too suddenly to keep his posture. Tenchi reflexively accepted his statistics book, complete with homework bookmark.  
  
"Oh no! I can't believe I forgot this."  
  
"I can't believe I got it to you on time." Seita held his hands behind his back  
  
Tenchi followed Seita's nod over his shoulder at the bus pulling to a stop. Not realizing how lopsided he was till he had one book instead of none in his left hand, he stumbled and dashed and nearly stumbled again to holler back thanks at the icon in the road.  
  
***  
  
Remember: knees now, back later. Aeka hefted the clothes hamper and emptied it with all the grace of a railroad bull evicting a crowd of hobos. Stepping over unsorted pile after another she remembered the palace chutes she'd imagined to be magic for the longest time. A tiny rustle answered her sigh before she could make it back up the stairs. Expecting to have to reprimand Ryo-ohki for some ^other^ mischief, she glanced down into the living room with a frown.  
  
Seita finished turning the page of a rather large encyclopedia and cleared his throat absently. The relaxed posture he read with always bordered on slouching with a poor old man's doze, yet his face always remained focused over an invisible pair of expensive spectacles. Aeka waited for him to look up at her and considered clearing her throat. Instead she chose to set the empty clothesbasket down with a thud and an overloaded exhale. He moved his eyes up to compare her to the latest chapter.  
  
"Excuse me, have you seen Sasami?" Aeka scanned around expressively.  
  
The only other person in the room looked back down like an eavesdropper and turned the page with more of a gargle when he re-cleared his throat. He answered with the usual softened calm in time to reassure her that he wasn't some sort of library automaton.  
  
"She went outside to play with Ryo-ohki while you were changing the bed sheets. They were moving fairly fast, but shouldn't have gone too far."  
  
Aeka forgot her curiosity at how he could read an entire encyclopedia page in less than a minute and remembered hearing Ryoko's voice while she was in Nobuyuki's bedroom.  
  
"And just where did Ryoko go?"  
  
"She's in the Onsen."  
  
The uncooperative laundry, the detached Seita, scolding Ryoko with no one to listen, none of these options drew her interest as strongly as a rising worry for her sister. She surrendered one last glance back at the dirty clothes and went out into the clean spring air with a startled wince at the sun jumping out from behind a cloud.  
  
Although the peaceful hum of the forest was nice, the absence of her sister's laugh tightened her face. She lifted her kimono to take wider strides through the tall grass. After a few steps she began to raise it a little higher, but itchy ankles where worse than tickled knuckles, and even with Tenchi at school it wasn't ladylike.  
  
A birdcall caught her attention, noticeably cheerful and solitary. The thick shade over the shrine steps would have made them look foreboding to a stranger, she thought. Stopping and putting on a hand visor, she was just able to make out Yosho's office. Squinting, thinking to bring Sasami up for a visit when she found her, she smiled. She remembered how awkward some things still were. She frowned.  
  
"Azaka, Kamadake!"  
  
"Yes, princess Aeka." Almost instant formality echoed on both sides.  
  
It had been so long since she'd called on them for anything but serious matters that her voice raised out of habit. Startled then blushed for sounding urgent without any apparent reason, she cleared then softened her throat.  
  
"Could you two please be an extra pair of eyes and ears for me while I search for Sasami?"  
  
"Of course, Your Highness." Azaka replied.  
  
"Would you like us to do a full scan?"  
  
"No Kamadake, that won't be necessary, I'm sure she's fine. Don't tell anyone, but checking on Sasami will provide the perfect diversion from that infernal washing machine." Aeka said in a low voice.  
  
"Of course Your Highness." They replied in unison as if just given a secret weapon's code.  
  
A number of times Aeka tried to hurry ahead of her guardians, feeling odd to be stuck in a shadow between them. It felt stranger to ask them to not escort her so closely. Before she could complete her fantasy of replacing them with a single prince she heard a distant laugh.  
  
"Ah, there she is." Relief dropped her shoulders with a sigh and changed her course into the forest. The guardians faced each other curiously then gradually closer as they had to weave between trees.  
  
"Sa-sa-miii." That her guardians did not echo the extended call was unexpected, that her sister did not reply was exasperating. A few dead branches snapped to catch her sleeves and harden her face. She called again a little louder and longer, listening as the forest replied with less than no echo. Had Azaka and Kamadake not looked so different from all the other trees they were weaving around it might have been even more unsettling to keep catching their movement in the corners and shadows. Sunlight kept beckoning from what must have been a clearing and must have been where Sasami was playing. The ground shifted to an easier decline, she was almost there, then almost ready to call out again.  
  
"Are you familiar with our surroundings Your Highness?"  
  
"Don't fuss, Azaka. We're not that far from the house, I can still see the field behind us." She dismissed her servant's concern and walked a little faster without thinking to look back.  
  
The clearing was only another tree away and she readied Sasami's name at a level tone. For a moment the first step into the tall grass made her wonder how in the world they'd been turned completely around. This break in the trees looked so much like the field they'd come from that she trailed off the last parts of her sister's name. Another more pronounced laugh relieved her.  
  
A hop, skip, and a stone's throw and the grass shortened into sparse weeds at the edge of a ravine. Aeka saw her sister chasing Ryo-ohki in a circle of giggles and meows. The tall blades in this clearing were much gentler as she trudged forward.  
  
"Princess Aeka, please wait for us." Kamadake asked to be ignored.  
  
"There you are Sasami, I've been looking everywhere. Now you know I don't like it when you go off without---Sasami?"  
  
Aeka's volume lowered to a softer confusion. Surely one of them had heard her, yet they both just kept running in a continuous circle. Apart from how difficult it was to tell who was chasing whom, the sight of their game struck her curiously, as if she were recognizing a new or nearly forgotten memory. Sasami was acting so very young, bright streamers of hair twirling between a pinwheel and a kite tail.  
  
Their free fun brought them gradually closer to the edge of the ravine. Both princesses gasped. Sasami balanced on one foot, waving her arms between a pinwheel and a wounded bird, and dropped with a high-pitched plea for anyone.  
  
Eyes stretched dry, Aeka's other organs prickled with a coat of ice. A handful of seconds to fight off the paralysis and another scream erupted that surpassed her sister's the way thunder distracts a Hurricane. The command scattered birds and Ryo-ohki but wanted to at least uproot a few saplings.  
  
"GUARDIANS! SAVE HER!"  
  
Her sprint broke like lightning then fell like a hailstone as she tripped over her kimono and flung herself into the shorter grass. She yanked herself up almost instantly, and ran forward with bundles of cloth in each fist. Earth and sky blurred till sky seemed to win. Nearly blinded by approaching shock, it took a few extra moments to notice she'd bounced off a wall.  
  
"Look out your highness!"  
  
"Yes, please step back from the ledge." Azaka continued their plea.  
  
The familiar surrounding of energy stabilized her vision, the distant chasm bellow turned back to grass as the guardians pulled her back. Their charge fell with their shield and scurried towards the ledge on her hands, knees, and a thin moan. Some dusty pebbles fell down the side of a cliff so high that the body at the bottom could have been covered with a thumbnail.  
  
"Princess Aeka, the only Jurian energy I am picking up in this vicinity is yours."  
  
Kamadake's words were solemn, then less than mechanical, then worse than cold.  
  
*They've given up? Are they telling me that it's too late? Nothing they could do?  
  
Aeka's next breath came in a rabid snarl as she leapt to her feet and turned to the guardians. Three shields came up in a screaming flash at such a hysteric pitch that she felt needles cover her throat and ears at once.  
  
"You-YOU WORTHLESS ^STUMPS^!"  
  
Two wide cracks split open across the characters on each guardian. Azaka and Kamadake were propelled backward, braking through a few trees, falling into shadow, dust, and a little smoke. Their charge couldn't even hear the crash of three story pines around them or feel the energy still singing her knuckles.  
  
"You're telling me s-s-she's ^dead^!" She tried to scream again but only managed a torn whisper.  
  
One of the collapsed trees shifted a little, another lighter shade of wood lay still but blinking in the shadow of a pinched jaw breaking open to consume them in another bellow.  
  
"^Answer me^!"  
  
Azaka righted himself and slowly floated towards her with Kamadake close behind. The original cracks now had dark smudges and glaring dents to compliment them. Though limbless both guardians seemed to suppress a limp.  
  
"Please Your Highness, try to calm yourself, we-"  
  
"SILENCE!"  
  
White flames poured up from Aeka's belly, hyperventilation condensed acid through her teeth. Rage shimmered her shield as Jurai energy turned to Jurai power and molded the filthy pretty kimono into traditional battle garb. She plummeted into the canyon, tears streaming and lips trembling at a pace to match her heart. The guardians submitted their reluctance in a moment's hesitation then surrendered, following as fast as they could.  
  
In her desperation she'd rocketed straight down and barely stopped before hitting the rock bottom herself. Having misjudged her descent, she landed a few meters to the side of where her sister lay. Sasami's little face was turned away. A dark red stream trickled along the curves of her left pigtail, a blue snake dead on a bed of boulders.  
  
"S-S-Sasami?" In a weak croak Aeka reached out where her feet refused to move.  
  
The silence that responded tore like an iron rod through a pile of decaying leaves. A chaos of memories and media flooded in, her mouth moved soundlessly with each wave. The initial shock was returning to consume the rest, the pillar of her will freezing and warping into ancient untreated wood. Sasami's body remained still, clothing folds and strands of disheveled hair trembled in a faint breeze to the dance of a dying insect.  
  
*Sasami, please no. It can't be. It isn't possible. She---Tsunami---  
  
Trading the ability to blink for the capacity to walk, Aeka planted a rubbery leg forward and stumbled, nearly feinting. She tried to tear the pain from her head and stomach at once, so many sobs coming at once that she could only hiccup. Empty nausea washed over her, yet she took it as appropriate, never imagining that Seita would be standing over Sasami's body when she looked up again.  
  
The princess's beautiful skin turned as white as the hole closing behind him, her heart straining further to meet the demands of its crumbling empire. As the slender man moved forward shirt velvet moved around him like a red flag heavy for representing both last hope and final confrontation. Uneven as the ground was he kept his feet steady the way he kept his face empty, all the while focusing down at the girl between them.  
  
"Seita...Sasami...she-" A starving mother's last words wouldn't have sounded so pitiful had they fractured a rib for the exertion.  
  
One, two, a few extra locks of blonde fell forward with the clean softness of a child's ghost. Hands still formally held behind his back, he gazed up unaffectedly as Azaka and Kamadake joined the show. Aeka angled her head at them like one broken toy to two others; the worn guardians occasionally bumped into the massive wall of earth beside them, sending down trickles of stone and dust. Desperate pink and white and bloodshot eyes silently turned back and rose into Seita's. Cold accusation manifested itself in his smooth frown and soft voice.  
  
"Why blame ^them^?"  
  
A cruel stranger clutched at Aeka's neck with her own fingers then pulled at a knot tighter than the crash of stones against her knees. Some mortal wound was being treated with a pressurized spray of alcohol, shrinking the world around Seita as he kneeled before Sasami with palms out in disbelief. The strained bubbles tumbling out of the accused did not lift his tone.  
  
"The guardians were designed to protect and serve The First Princess, not baby-sit The Second. That, Lady Aeka, was your responsibility."  
  
Looking down again, or simply losing feeling in her neck, Aeka saw Sasami unchanged save for a thicker stream. Her own voice, like an echo of Seita's, imploded and looped with unnatural calmness.  
  
*You let Sasami die.  
  
*You let Sasami die.  
  
Blackness, forced enough for a red tint, swallowed her eyes and spit wailing denial into the space between her tight hands. A guttural moan took over to shake Aeka's head and crush her throat, drawing out in asphyxiation.  
  
"Noooh-"  
  
Shiny boots pounded the rocks one at a time.  
  
Affecting no one, but answered by a skeleton's hard fingers, Aeka was hefted to her feet by both shoulders. Her moan shattered into morbid sobs.  
  
"Look at her Aeka, look at what you've left your sister to." The harsh whisper poured over her face, wet and cold without leaving a trace. She only shook her head more fiercely, turning her hair into the pelt of dead animal torn in two by competing scavengers.  
  
"I said ^look^!" The wholly alien sound of him raising his voice ripped open her eyes.  
  
Seita only let her shoulders go for the second it took to swing behind her. Parts of Sasami's stream where already turning brown at the edges, thus the surreal photograph dissipated into a hellish truth. The choking sound began to sputter in her throat again, each mini convulsion further paralyzing the rest of her body.  
  
"Shame-shame-^shame^ on YOU!" The reprimand came point blank into her ear, a subhuman hiss crawled up to dance perversely on her failure.  
  
Aeka's forearms crushed between her stomach and thighs as she bent to rock back and forth in a first wave of tortured bawling. Enough flashes of strength halted the second and scrambled her over the stones into a praying position at Sasami's side.  
  
"Tsunami! Do not abandon my sister now! Please, Goddess, any Goddess, Gods ..Devils! ^Anyone! Spare my sister, I beg of you^!"  
  
Aeka clutched her skull to finish the ritual, nearly burying her face next to the altar in an underground bow. Sobs came in again to make up for the interruption, Seita walked between them to the other side of Sasami, positioning his legs at a leisurely pace.  
  
"Now-now princess, there's no need to trouble any of ^them^ with your shameful carelessness."  
  
Sarcastic condescent dangled over her like a fresh pelt seared with too much perfume, his charm and intelligence overdone into an affected confession that compelled Aeka stare up as the executioner unmasked himself. He looked down, head tilted at an angle parallel with his smug half smile, solidifying her position at his feet and giving her emotions more of a shadow to fester under. In the short time it took him to be both satisfied and disappointed that neither princess could look any worse, he reposed and knelt into dignity, lifting Sasami in his arms like a precious doll.  
  
The blood had slightly condensed the lock into a rubber cord. Seita looked down the length of darkened blue to the dripping tip as if contemplating a paintbrush. His half smile moved up the other cheek and he tilted his head to look at the face still turned from Aeka. Cheap nanny rocking first relaxed then stretched Sasami's body into a figurine. He stood her on a larger rock facing her sister, head still down, a new stream starting down the other pigtail.  
  
Aeka watched his sensual movements; cracking his knuckles and stretching his lean figure with such miserable narcissism that she expected him to shatter like a seashell. The savored warm-up exercise made her take closer notice of the slightly elongated and sharpened nails on his smallest digits. He kept the dandy extensions pulled in from Sasami's face as he lifted it for her sister's inspection like a fine teacup. A deformed rodent dug it's claws into the young woman's entrails and began to breath for her.  
  
A wide gash spread from the apex of Sasami's skull along the left side of her face. Blood gleamed on a quarter of her clothes and three quarters of her head. The right eye had rolled back into a clean white marble whereas her left had dislocated, drooping from twists of nerves and vessels. A dislocated and half-crushed mandible weighed down the entire side of her mouth in a lifeless gape.  
  
"Don't worry princess, I can fix her right up." Seita returned to his more common voice, its soft reassurance like a comfort robot programmed too well. Aeka could only stare in mindless horror while he searched his shirt pocket with dainty fingertips.  
  
"Ah ha." He chirped happily, withdrawing a small paper rectangle between his index and middle digit. First holding it up for a moment's appreciation, he began to remove the packaging around the adhesive bandage. A soft squishing sound strapped the dangling eye back into place amid the doctor's hum of Sasami's latest favorite tune.  
  
In the time it took him to handkerchief his hands Sasami's skeleton jerked itself to attention with good eye rolling forward and connected jaw-side smiling brightly. Aeka stepped back, clutching her mouth as her sister let out an underwater giggle.  
  
"Run along now Sasami-" Seita lifted his hands to the sky at precisely the moment to catch a meowing meteorite, "-and don't forget Ryo- ohki."  
  
She took the cabbit from him and dashed towards the cliff face with another giggle. A white hole opened and closed for her like an automatic door. One more knuckle crack for good measure echoed like a shattered mountain as he turned face first and body next toward his patient audience. Slowly over and into Aeka's horror, he lowered and narrowed his brow with a small smile and deep anticipation. Completely unnoticed during the operation, the guardians landed a few meters behind her and exchanged a glance.  
  
"I believe Lady Aeka may be unwell." Azaka said in a quiet and solemn prompt to his partner.  
  
"Yes, perhaps we should try to get her back to the house." Kamadake added.  
  
"I'm still not picking up Sasami's life frequency anywhere within the vicinity."  
  
Under oversensitive circumstances their conversation was clearer in a whisper and enough to throw Aeka from a steaming onsen into a snowdrift. Her other hand whisked up to her mouth as she blinked rapidly at her paralysis. Seita's smile tore open in an electric movement. The corners of his wine lips sharp, bright teeth clenching tightly, he extended his palms towards her.  
  
"Oh, come now princess, surely you know there is no vanity like jealous vanity, and no jealous vanity like a sister's---jealous---vanity. Admit it; a part of you was hoping some sort of...^accidental disfiguration^ might really befall her."  
  
Seita's balancing steps toward her choreographed the way he savored words and maintained his wicked smile. Blue eyes swirled with sapphire water while gold hair tossed back in a windless billow. Trembling sweat came together between Aeka's hands and jaw and began to remold her forgotten ability to speak, to scream, to call her guardians.  
  
They could not read her thoughts, yet even through their damages they had no trouble recognizing and pinpointing the source of a threatening voice.  
  
"Mr. Seita seems to be upsetting the princess." Azaka reported seriously.  
  
Mr. Seita ignored their concern. Aeka began to remember her little moments of jealousy like gruesome murders.  
  
"Love her though you may," he began again with a bitter tint, "the part of you driven by your own 'beautiful' ambition---it overrides any simple desire your sister might have to be 'pretty'!"  
  
A tiny pair of movements distracted Aeka downward; two smallest nails poked and tested the resistance on Seita's thumbs. Breathing together the satisfied and the anxious, he called her attention from the puff of his chest.  
  
"But this scenario brings to mind so much more."  
  
The entire accident and aftermath replayed itself in a sun's explosion, summoning enough rage to ignite Aeka's voice against the imposed delusion. Though it came in a strangled rasp, it was enough for her guardians.  
  
"Azaka! Kamadake! D-D-Destroy this creature!"  
  
They hurled themselves forward with enough force to swirl a cloud of dust over their hysteric mistress. A sphere of arching and glowing energy surrounded the target, red arcs ignited all around him as the containment field began to shrink.  
  
Seita stepped through a harmless smoke, never taking his focus off Aeka enough to truly ignore her bodyguards. She gasped in disbelief, and threw out her own shield. Solid energy pulsated forward, flattening the surrounding stone and stopping his approach within an inch of the sphere. Sharpened lines dulled and drained while he closed his eyes with a disappointed exhale. Aeka gritted her teeth.  
  
Hands kept behind his back, Seita leaned forward in a half bow, his torso phasing through the shield without any visible effort. He lifted his head without straightening his body, the Cheshire bliss replaced by a bored twist of lips.  
  
"Please don't tell me I have to explain my invulnerability again."  
  
By the time he invited himself the rest of the way into her personal space Aeka had pored the last of her color into the shield. She jumped back and thrust her fists forward, sending bolts of Jurai energy streaming through Seita towards her guardians. They dodged narrowly while the true target only shook his head at the ground with a nasal chuckle.  
  
"I've no desire to waste time even touching you Milady, we've still yet to truly smell the ^delicacy^ of your loss." A subhuman hiss enunciated the key term.  
  
With a murderous scream she hurled a boulder of energy at him, promptly bringing up her shield again to protect herself from the resulting shower of rubble.  
  
"How will you, can you, begin to digest this? This false end to your sister has brought out the true forfeit of yourself. Is there any way to hold your blood bond the same now that it circulates the malady of your jealousy ^and^ your guilt?" Seita clutched the air beneath his chin and pulled his smile into a quiet snarl. Backing into stone, Aeka's next screaming attack was aborted as the guardians shadowed their target pathetically.  
  
"Forgive our failure Your Highness. We do not have enough power left to continue a sufficient attack."  
  
"We need Ryo-oh to recharge us." Kamadake tried to explain stoically.  
  
The snarl relaxed into a tilted smile but Seita still ignored them, as Aeka had to; her opponent was close enough to slap now. A raging fist passed through his mild entertainment and made her stumble forward through the rest of him, she turned sharply to make sure he was still there. He had already turned to face her in kind, head pulled back so eyes could stare down.  
  
"Often it takes projections such as this to make one appreciate how debilitating negative emotions can be when properly combined. It will be interesting to see the joy you took in your sister's presence converted into a loathing for your own, and a ^fear^ for mine." He looked up at the ledge, holding his chin, tracing his bottom lip with the point of his nail, taking in the last lines of satisfaction.  
  
"This session has been most invigorating, I think it's best we stop here."  
  
Aeka carved a point in her throat.  
  
"Y-Y-You-"  
  
A focused look then a belly clutched fit of laughter replied, quiet clucks crawling out into cacophonous blasts of reveled derangement. Aeka sickened at an outburst as loathsome as the presence of his empty dimension. Her mouth felt full of tar and fingernail trimmings, she saw the rocks around her begin to bleed, fresh and burning rubber filled her lungs. The self-proclaimed perversion of humor itself settled again in a hearty exhale, running his fingers back through his hair with a sensuous grin till cruel vanity relaxed into a pronounced and consuming detachment.  
  
"No princess, save your words. This whole interaction, as I said, has been well worth my time, so please do not throw it away with some tired and inaccurate label for me.  
  
"Naturally you have the chance to discard this incident as merely a 'bad dream', or to continue living not with a haunting hallucination but with an invaluable vision of yourself---and your 'love' for Sasami." He closed his eyes, enjoying his own advice with a relaxed grin, missing Aeka's reaction to her sister's name.  
  
"Sasami! Where-^Where is she^?!" Aeka clenched her fists till the pressure took her a threatening step closer.  
  
"How fortunate she is to have such a caring sibling." He smiled genuinely, before a chuckle undid any potential humanity. Another berserk attack welled up in the princess and was forced down with a grunt.  
  
"Where is she?" Her strained calm went unnoticed as Seita crossed is arms thoughtfully and turned away.  
  
"Your Highness, it's been so very long since I've lived with a supportive family, I'd hate for our little exchange to shorten my stay."  
  
"What!?" She stabbed.  
  
"I'm sure you understand. These days it's so hard to find doors open to all the things you wanted to call me. Now then, aren't you worried about me continuing my work with little Sasami, or perhaps your dear Tenchi?"  
  
Murder feeling obsolete, she was hardly able to imagine what he was asking. He noticed and smiled a little wider.  
  
"You really are anxious to keep them safe, aren't you? Well I'm equally anxious to stay in my host's favor. So-" he looked over his shoulder, speaking with only a hint of his relished affectation, "don't force Tenchi to find out ^what^ I am, and I'll tell you ^where^ Sasami is, so that you can go tell her ^who^ you are."  
  
Aeka swallowed a cannonball to stare beyond the deceptive blue, the obvious potential for cruelty, and into a distinct depth of unfathomable patience. When she nodded in agreement Seita breathed to the sky, slipping into the warm waters of her submission as irons clamped down on her chest.  
  
"Thank you princess. Hm-" Hesitation marked him clearly for the first time, seeing him reconsider anything must have been the only thing left to increase her fear.  
  
"Drat---I always have disliked making threats, much less increasing them, but I guess there's no way to forget it now." He accepted whatever was concerning him almost casually. The now familiar wedged hand gesture forced Aeka to hold back her vision like the waters of an entire ocean. Wind on steel, the pressure in her head remained uninterrupted longer, then longer.  
  
Silence luring out desperate naivety, luring vision back. Everything Aeka had known in seeing Sasami's body reinvented itself as she unclenched her eyes to experience her father speaking with Seita's subhuman hiss.  
  
"Furthermore; share the details of our dream Aeka, and I might be forced to enter the roll of your father," he stroked his replication of the Emperor's beard thoughtfully, looking away in devious contemplation, "the ^roll^ of your father, the ^robes^ of your mother."  
  
Solid, authoritarian features began to melt into the porcelain skin and bright eyes of her mother, one layer of royal wax beneath the other. Misaki closed bluer eyes and moved her hands up her torso, over her breasts, along the sides of her face, and into her hair with all the seductive grace of a natural harlot.  
  
"Indeed, I might take the roll of your mother."  
  
The Queen, though appearing in an outdated style of hair and dress, seemed no less real as she imitated Seita's glaring smile, waiting for a scream or whimper, oblivious that The First Princess had already tried and failed at both.  
  
Misaki's lips softened and puckered into the air as she lowered her hands onto a second pair creeping over her shoulders. A terribly accurate imitation of Funaho's face leaned into her collarbone. Both their hands caressed The First Queen's face, tilting gently to the reflection and welding of textures, all smiles and coos, all pursed lips and hums. A nose dimpled a cheek. A strand of hair tickled a forehead.  
  
"Perhaps I would even take the rollsss of your ^mothersss^."  
  
Funaho hissed into Misaki's ear, neither taking their eyes away from Aeka's even as one queen kissed the other on the cheek with a silent and no less perverse squeak of moisture. They sighed into a collective movement. The First queen leaned forward to snake her hands around The Second's hips. Misaki in turn pushed out her chest to bend her arms over and back through Funaho's hair, down her neck. Looking at Aeka with blackened now matching bluer eyes, Funaho lifted the front of Misaki's robe to look down at her fine white legs and the effeminate man between them.  
  
Seita, sitting cross-legged with elbows on his knees and chin in his hands, moved forward on an invisible conveyor belt. He looked up at Aeka like a child smugly anticipating an older relative's blatant cover story. Almost entirely red eyes smoldered down at him less than half a meter away, trying to replace horror with rage. With his hands folding behind his back and a deep breath filling his lungs he rose while asking:  
  
"Do we have an understanding?"  
  
"Y...Y-Yes!" Aeka kept her head down and answered in a predictably strained whisper, though it came quicker than she believed.  
  
"Good," he affirmed darkly, "now-" she looked up loathsomely and saw him regarding her with the same sideways superior expression he had when she was collapsed before Sasami. "Should I tell you---to 'politely' ask me--- to tell you---where Sasami is?" He questioned the air, turning his eyes to the sky in mock contemplation. Aeka pressed her chin to her neck and considered biting her tongue. The smug smile dissipated, along with the statuesque queens behind him.  
  
"No-" Seita turned on his heal and began walking away, "that won't be necessary. I've wielded out enough hoarded emotions for now; humiliation can wait." A portal opened up a few meters in front of him and he called back to her without slowing his exit. "Sasami should be fine, in fact, she should still be in the onsen with Ryoko."  
  
Oblivion swallowed and shut. A choke later, despite overwhelming urges to collapse, Aeka rocketed up from the ravine with a desperate scream. The guardians strained a hover then managed to follow far behind her.  
  
***  
  
"Hold on Ryo-ohki, you're still wet!" Sasami laughed as a scruffy mass of fur bounded down the hallway.  
  
"Damn it, who's gonna clean this up now?" Ryoko mumbled around the puddles of water her ship was leaving on the floor. The muffled meow captured in a towel went unnoticed even as Ryoko's ears perked up and eyes narrowed.  
  
*Something's coming towards the house---fast!  
  
Cyan and light blue cloth blurred, Ryoko's towel fell to the floor. She formed her sword and teleported to the roof within the same second. Ready to meet the intruder head on, the attack jerked to a stop when Aeka landed in the back yard, wrapped in Jurian battle gear and nearly sweating energy. She ran into the house faster than her rival had ever seen her move.  
  
"Aeka? I thought you were doing the laundry. What's wrong?" Sasami asked innocently as her sister pulled the screen door off its track.  
  
The responsible sister looked around wildly then lunged into the living room. Princess Sasami put her hands up defensively at the startling movement while Aeka stumbled to her knees and embraced her as tightly as their mother ever had.  
  
"Sasami! Sasami! Are you all right? Please tell me you're all right!" She cried, lifting the smaller girl off her feet a few times.  
  
"A-e-ka, what's-" A crushed voice fretted.  
  
She released her grip and held her sister by her shoulders, looking her over with wild eyes, touching her face gently, fearful she might break after being treated so roughly.  
  
"Aeka, what in the world is wrong?" Sasami tried to sound calm, but was already far too worried for the near-hysterical First Princess.  
  
Their eyes exchanged wonderment, caught gradually deeper in reflections of compassion. Sasami took the vice-like hands from her shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze. The older princess stared back, shock and desperation melting, exploding into tears too large for her exhausted eyes.  
  
"SA-SA-MI!"  
  
The name repeated then stuttered into muffled sobs as Aeka ground her swollen face into the tiny neck. Sasami could only stroke Aeka's hair with tender shushes, ignoring the pinch beneath her sister's white knuckles.  
  
Ryoko watched the scene unfold from a distance, eyes wholly confused yet helplessly softened as she waited for an answer or at least some believable reassurance.  
  
"What's gotten into her?" She asked herself quietly, turning her head towards the living room to identify a thin noise with half a frown.  
  
*Seita sure doesn't let anything interrupt his reading.  
  
***  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Six is Monster-  
  
-Part 2-  
  
***  
  
The afternoon sun was almost intense enough to make Tenchi wish he'd brought a pair of sunglasses; even the cloudless sky seemed faded from the exposure. He'd tried to lie back to let their picnic lunch settle, but the inescapable glare kept it impossible. Thoughts of a long and heavy summer made him shiver. Something to enjoy the fleetingly mild climate was in order and making conversation with his grandfather without opening his eyes, a friendly imitation, might be just what he needed. Glancing to his right her noticed that, oddly enough, Katshuhito's glasses were not catching a glare. His wrinkled eyes were still resting.  
  
"Yes Tenchi?" He began calmly without so much as fluttering an eyelash. His grandson chuckled and shook his head.  
  
"How do you ^do^ that?" Tenchi asked in mock exasperation.  
  
"I told you; it comes with the trade."  
  
"I guess so."  
  
Tenchi looked back out at other picnickers and smiled. Mihoshi and Sasami had convinced Ryoko and Aeka to join them in a game of hot potato, using a real potato that they'd forgotten to wash before bringing out for Ryo-ohki in another failed attempt to put some variety in her diet. The four girls giggled and squealed, alternately daring to hold the spud for longer than half a second. Seita remained in the shade, leaning against the trunk with his head hung low. He'd been designated to call time at random increments, being as his automatic defenses reacted even to a tossed vegetable. His hair hung too willowy to see if he was watching them or not.  
  
"Grandpa?" Tenchi began again in earnest.  
  
"Yes, Tenchi."  
  
"I was wondering," his words organized in an exhale, "I can't remember the last time you asked for undisturbed meditation."  
  
"Yes, indeed it has been a while since I've needed to."  
  
No commitment there.  
  
"Yeah, um, so did it go well?" The hesitant politeness that often arose in his voice always made Tenchi feel younger than he was. He looked up at a slight frown marking his grandfather's hesitation.  
  
"No Tenchi, I'm afraid it didn't." Katshuhito replied solemnly, yet still without giving away more than the obvious disappointment.  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Tenchi forced some more confidence into his consolation. The silence between them was starting up again, and he knew he still needed more assertion.  
  
"Any idea why?"  
  
Katshuhito, cleared his throat, but answered promptly as someone who'd already anticipated the entire conversation.  
  
"I'm not sure exactly, I was searching for an answer to a question--- more of an uncertainty than a question really. Once again, even mental and spiritual transcendence cannot always acquire something so well as simple patience."  
  
"I see." Strangely enough, Tenchi thought that maybe he really did.  
  
Sasami pouted playfully as Seita called out time with the potato headed into her hands. His voice had been just loud enough to be heard, though he kept looking at the ground. Mihoshi accepted the game piece as Sasami skipped off towards the timer's tree, replaced by Ryo-ohki's toddler form.  
  
"Well, I guess we don't have to worry about her eating the game anymore." Ryoko joked knowingly. Ryo-ohki's sound of extreme disgust was rewarded with a round of laughter.  
  
Tenchi turned back to his grandfather after absorbing a little more of the happy scene, noticing with mixed relief that he was also watching Sasami.  
  
"I guess I was just a little concerned."  
  
"Oh." Katshuhito looked over at his grandson's contemplative face without moving his own.  
  
"I don't know, it's just that---well, little Washu's been in her lab for over a week now and-"  
  
"Did you think her and I were plotting something?" An old man's slyness was still enough to make Tenchi chuckle with a faint blush.  
  
"Oh no! Nothing like that." He argued before returning promptly to sincerity. "What I meant was---when people withdraw its usually the first sign that something's wrong, I was kind of worried."  
  
"I see."  
  
The both of them returned their focus to Sasami as she tossed flower petals and grass into the air and swayed in an absent dance beneath it. She offered Seita a few more dinner suggestions while the unmonitored potato got hotter and hotter. Frozen with wide nervous eyes, Sasami watched a moderately sized spider thread down a little too close to her face. Seeming to sense her distress, Seita reached out a hand to catch the tiny creature. Yosho, remembering the guest's earlier method of enjoying the tree bark, leaned forward.  
  
"What's wrong Grandpa?"  
  
Unharmed, the spider descend time and again, hand over hand, Seita treating it like a delicate breed of yoyo. Tenchi watched his grandfather relax and replaced his worry with renewed curiosity.  
  
"Nothing Tenchi," Katshuhito assured, hoping to return the silence.  
  
"So what are you uncertain about anyway?" Tenchi tried to ask quickly and casually enough to lure out a quick response.  
  
"Tenchi, sharing a question does not always make the answer easier to find, sometimes quite the opposite." Katshuhito replied in his favorite sagely tone.  
  
Tenchi just sighed, decided to ponder ^that^ one later, and let their attention turn back to the impromptu nature lesson going on amidst a game of chaos.  
  
"See," Seita began kindly, "if you learn to identify their colors, you'll be able to tell the dangerous one's from harmless little fellows like him."  
  
"They're still kinda scary." Sasami grumbled, still scratching her hands in emphasis.  
  
"But look, he's not even trying to bite me. You know, I've read a lot about this planet since I've been here, and I've only come across a few creatures that would ever set out to hurt you."  
  
"Yeah I know, and without spiders all the other bugs would overpopulate." She recited, sighing at logic's inability to overcome old emotions.  
  
"Precisely." He affirmed to both Sasami and the tiny creature in his hand as he let it crawl off into the grass. "Do you think its time to stop the potato yet?"  
  
Sasami turned around at the now focused and determined competitors.  
  
"Hmmm, almost, count to three first." She suggested smartly.  
  
"Alright, one---two---"  
  
---  
  
"You're out Ryoko!" Aeka cheered, while Mihoshi and Ryo-ohki tried to shake out their tensed hands.  
  
The game was not even a real competition; based purely on chance as Ryoko doubted Seita gave a flying potato about who won. Despite all this, something about Aeka's laugh dug into her. She wasn't loosing entirely, the princess still had Mihoshi and Ryo-ohki to outlast, but the infuriating superior gleam in those bright eyes still shone down on her. With a lowered sneer she held tight to the potato for a few calculated seconds, then tossed it with a fanged grin.  
  
"Here you go Aeka---catch!"  
  
Their game dropped into the grass with a small curl of steam. A squeal of pain demanded everyone's attention.  
  
"Why you-" Aeka began, scowling at her rival with shrinking eyes.  
  
"What?" Ryoko responded with mock innocence. "It's called ^hot^ potato, right?"  
  
Within seconds two angry foreheads pressed together ferociously. Sasami called out the first sentiment to cross Tenchi's mind.  
  
"Oh no, not again."  
  
He'd seen the whole interchange, and as he feared, was soon dragged in as a material witness.  
  
"Did you see what she did, Lord Tenchi?" Aeka hollered, pointed finger aimed at its usual target. "I'll probably get a blister from that."  
  
"Don't listen to her Tenchi, she's the one who just got a perfectly good potato all dirty." Ryoko tried her big innocent eyes for emphasis.  
  
"They already come ^out^ of the dirt you twit!"  
  
"What did you call me!?"  
  
The argument ensued and decayed into pure malice, too heated even for Sasami to interject. Tenchi felt a pain bubbling up in his skull.  
  
*Why? WHY! Why can't they just grow up!? What am I doing wrong? How many different ways do I have to tell them that it's driving me mad? I'm so sick of this I could just-  
  
"STOP IT!"  
  
Tenchi's reprimand came not in a shout, nor a scream, but in a roar. Everyone gathered assumed a stance of pure shock, Katshuhito included.  
  
"How many more times do we have to go through this, huh!?" The referee's rage suddenly dwarfed the other players. No answer.  
  
"Every time we try to have fun as a family someone has to go and act like a spiteful little child!"  
  
Ryoko and Aeka, drug their eyes towards each other in unrelenting accusation. Tenchi saw this, prepared another lecture, but characteristically lost his nerve, hanging his head with a sigh. He gave no sign of continuing his lecture, nor any sign of ending it. The heavy silence remained.  
  
"Come along Sasami, it's time we went back inside." Aeka recommended softly, with a lingering hint of disdain for whoever might catch and dare return it. Mihoshi helped the two sisters gather up the picnic supplies while Tenchi and his grandfather did the same. Ryoko glided up to him timidly.  
  
"But Tenchi-" she began again in a pitiful whine. Tenchi clearly didn't want to hear it.  
  
"Ryoko...why can't you just play by the rules?"  
  
The solemn question lingered in the air while he made his way back to the house, taking no notice of the emotional distress on the post-demon's face. Seita remained seated for a moment longer and stepped out of the shade into the replaced silence of the meadow, an unexplained pair of tight rectangular sunglasses wrapped about his eyes. He walked up to Ryoko's side expressionlessly. At the sound of his approach she clenched her tears back and turned her head away. The remaining guests stood silently, leaving each other unacknowledged as they watched the rest of the family reenter the house.  
  
"The sun is awfully bright today." Pre-emotion began and, receiving the lack of response expected, continued just the same.  
  
"If you're going to stay outside-" He removed his sunglasses and held them under Post-emotion's chin, "you might want to wear these."  
  
Ryoko accepted the offer in curious reflex, but held them without any apparent interest. Seita stepped into oblivion and left her standing alone, refusing to show any signs of the subsequent mild disorientation caused by his personal highway. They looked like they might be a little too large, more importantly they looked ready to fade away the moment she stopped resisting the urge to crush them.  
  
***  
  
"Hey Mihoshi, look at this!" Sasami held up and stretched a department store catalog across the table.  
  
"What is it Sasami?" The officer brightened and sat down next to the princess, eager as always to see something new.  
  
"See here," the young shopper put the page down and pressed her finger into it, "it looks a lot like the couch we have in the living room, but look; it folds out into a bed."  
  
"Oh yeah, I've heard about those." Mihoshi leaned forward with now only slightly perked interest.  
  
"But think about it Mihoshi, we could replace the one we have in the living room with this one, then it could fold out and there'd be enough room for you ^and^ Seita, that way you wouldn't have to go sleep out in your ship any more."  
  
The dishes stopped rattling on one side of the sink. Aeka projected herself into the conversation by slowly starring up at the wall. Still washing, Tenchi hoped to not be drawn into how such a normally sweet little girl could make such a thinly veiled suggestion. Meanwhile, Mihoshi had been mysteriously replaced by a cherry red mannequin of herself. Sasami waved her hand in front of the detective's vacant eyes.  
  
"Hello-oh, Mihoshi, what's wrong?"  
  
Aeka moved her jaw against lost words. Missing the extent of her vacancy, Tenchi could not help but stifle a laugh and could not help nearly jumping into the sink when Aeka whirled around as if her sister had offered to sell her soul for a pack of chocolate poky.  
  
"What? She said that it got lonely out in her ship sometimes." A tiny hint of laughter was showing at the edge of Sasami's shrinking innocence, and she knew it.  
  
She looked over at Seita, reading on the couch as if alone. He looked up from his book with a single raised eyebrow. It was finally more than she could stand; The Second Princess allowed herself to be caught in her own mischief for the umpteenth time. Young laughter filled the house. Tenchi had to bite his lip and face the dishes to keep it in. Mihoshi's head fell to the table with a dull thud.  
  
"Nevermind Sasami, its time to go to bed." The urgency was clear, flat, edgeless crystal. Aeka was so locked in dignity that her sister stared harder for sincerity.  
  
"^Yeah--- time for bed---goodnight everyone^." Mihoshi rose in an airy trance and walked out the back door in a wavering hurry.  
  
"Sweet dreams Mihoshi." Sasami called with a new chuckle.  
  
"Yes, sleep well Miss Mihoshi." Aeka echoed with extra concern rather than sympathy.  
  
Sasami buried her face in the catalog and tried halfheartedly to hold off another bout of laughter. Very slow and very quiet, Aeka kept her eyes on her sister as long as she could as she turned back to the dishes. Tenchi exhaled the last of his chuckles gratefully, trying to be as oblivious in his washing as Seita was in his reading.  
  
"Go on Sasami, I'll be with you as soon as I finish these dishes." Aeka said with calm finality, unable to be detoured from the subject.  
  
"But I'm not tired." The Second Princess protested with uncommon defiance.  
  
Strings of authority training and ropes of observed parenting told The First to ignore any inconsequential argument. Sasami frowned for a moment then smiled cleverly.  
  
"You want me to go to bed? Well then, you have to read me a bedtime story first." She crossed her arms to emphasize her own stubborn royal authority. Aeka turned with a disbelieving look.  
  
"You what? Sasami, aren't you more than a little old for such things?"  
  
"Aren't you a little ^young^ to be handing out bedtimes?" Sasami answered smartly.  
  
"Sasami-" Aeka began again with confused irritation.  
  
"If you want to treat me like a baby, then that's how I'll act. I'm not going to bed unless someone reads me a story!" She stamped her foot for emphasis and glared back at the mortified look on her sister's face and the stupefied look on Tenchi's. The standoff might have gone on all night were it not for an unlikely intervention.  
  
"Very well, Sasami." Seita spoke up calmly, already at the bookshelf with his hand tracing the titles.  
  
Tenchi scratched his head and shrugged at Aeka, who looked at the floor motionlessly. After thanking the sixth guest with excessive formality, Sasami bounded over and onto the couch, swinging her legs as she waited.  
  
"Oh well, at least she didn't ask for anything big."  
  
Still ignoring her Prince's shrug, Aeka watched them sit down together with pale cheeks and trembling lips. Seita offered them both a hat-tilting smile before he returned his attention to Sasami. Tenchi had washed four more dishes when he looked up to see Aeka still petrified at the backs of two heads. She began to turn back to the dishes and so he did the same, noticing this time how slow she moved, but distracted by a very dirty and very sharp knife.  
  
"This story is told as a poem Sasami, it's by an author who passed away a while ago. He wrote in English and when translated to Japanese the syllables and rhymes don't maintain the same flow, however, I believe its themes are the most relevant aspects." Seita's introduction was almost too professional for a bedtime story, but Sasami's interest only seemed to increase.  
  
"Okay." She smiled eagerly.  
  
"And you'll do as your sister says if I read to you?" He showed her the proper way to do a clever smile. Sasami watched, learned, and replied in kind.  
  
"If the story's good."  
  
Seita chuckled and opened the page marked by the nail of his left little finger. He cleared his throat and announced the selection formally before continuing with a crisp narrative.  
  
"^The Walrus And The Carpenter^, by Lewis Carroll."  
  
"The sun was shining on the sea---shining with all his might. He did his very best to make---the billows smooth and bright. And this was odd, because it was---the middle of the night." "Huh?" Sasami asked, as if Seita were not translating to a language she could understand. The narrator looked up from the book like an old turtle and half-smiled in mock annoyance.  
  
"Just listen Sasami, when I get to the end it will all either make sense," he paused and turned back to the book with a full smile, "or not need to." Sasami complied, leaning in a little closer with a puzzle-solving face. "The moon was shining sulkily---because she thought the sun---had got no business to be there---after the day was done. 'It's very rude of him,' she said. 'To come and spoil the fun.'" Seita quoted the moon, not in his previous soft and fluid reading voice, but with the upper crust pitch of a proper old Englishwoman. His captive audience stifled a giggle. "The sea was wet as wet could be. The sands were dry as dry. You could not see a cloud, because---no cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead---there were no birds to fly.  
  
"The Walrus and the Carpenter---were walking close at hand; they wept like anything to see---such quantities of sand: `If this were only cleared away,' they said, `it would be grand!'---'If seven maids with seven mops--- swept it for half a year, do you suppose,' the Walrus said, 'that they could get it clear?'---'I doubt it,' said the Carpenter, and shed a bitter tear."  
The Walrus came to life in an exaggerated portly baritone, whereas the carpenter mumbled with nasal pessimism. Seita paused for Sasami to pry her hands away from her mouth and breathe in enough calm to make it through at least the next line. "'O Oysters, come and walk with us!'---the Walrus did beseech---'a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, along the briny beach: we cannot do with more than four---to give a hand to each.'---The eldest Oyster looked at him, but never a word he said: the eldest Oyster winked his eye, and shook his heavy head---meaning to say he did not choose---to leave the oyster bed. "But four young Oysters hurried up, all eager for the treat: their coats were brushed, their faces washed, their shoes were clean and neat---and this was odd, because, you know---they hadn't any feet. "Four other Oysters followed them---and yet another four---and thick and fast they came at last---and more, and more, and more---all hopping through the frothy waves, and scrambling to the shore. "The Walrus and the Carpenter---walked on a mile or so, and then they rested on a rock---conveniently low: and all the little Oysters stood---and waited in a row. `The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'to talk of many things: of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax---of cabbages, and kings---and why the sea is boiling hot---and whether pigs have wings.' Seita let a small grin rise and fall with his breath. "'But wait a bit,' the Oysters cried, 'before we have our chat; for some of us are out of breath, and all of us are fat!'---'No hurry!' said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that.  
Sasami's mouth and eyes both chocked on a laugh at the absurdly high pitched squeak Seita achieved. She nearly doubled over again at the sight of Ryo-ohki putting her paws in her ears with a painful grimace. The narrator, once again, showed absolute patience.  
" 'A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said, 'is what we chiefly need: pepper and vinegar besides---are very good indeed---now if you're ready, Oysters dear, we can begin to feed.'---'But not on us,' the Oysters cried, turning a little blue, 'after such kindness, that would be---a dismal thing to do!'---'The night is fine,' the Walrus said, 'do you admire the view?--- It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!'---The Carpenter said nothing but---`Cut us another slice: I wish you were not quite so deaf- --I've had to ask you twice!'  
"'It seems a shame,' the Walrus said, 'to play them such a trick, after we've brought them out so far, and made them trot so quick!'---The Carpenter said nothing but---'The butter's spread too thick!'  
  
"'I weep for you,' the Walrus said: `I deeply sympathize.'--- With sobs and tears he sorted out---those of the largest size, holding his pocket-handkerchief---before his streaming eyes.---'O Oysters,' said the Carpenter, 'you've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?'--- But answer came there none---and this was scarcely odd, because...they'd eaten every one."  
Sasami's head angled back till her chin touched her neck, on eyebrow raised in utter confusion. She opened her mouth, rethought her question, and tried again in a disbelieving voice.  
  
"They what?"  
  
"^They'd eaten every one^." Seita re-recited.  
  
"But I thought they said-" Sasami began frankly, then softened a glance at the book, "that's kind of sad."  
  
"Yes, and what do you think the moral of the story is?"  
  
"Um, don't walk off with strangers?"  
  
The narrator chuckled at her shrug and grinned at her reflexive smile.  
  
"I suppose that's close enough."  
  
"That was weird, but it was kinda cool."  
  
Couch springs groaned as Sasami chuckled, leaning back into the couch and hugging her knees. For some reason she felt compelled to picture both the walrus and the carpenter dressed in Seita's clothes. The gold buttons of the emerald green shirt were stretched and snapped along the walrus's huge belly while the purple velvet pants drooped in saggy folds on the carpenter's stocky legs. She looked closely at his calm profile and giggled into her hands again.  
  
"And what's so funny now?" He asked without looking up from the next skimmed page.  
  
"Oh nothing. Do another one---pleeease."  
  
"Hmmm, let me see-" Seita smiled at her sweet command and searched back through the pages, clearly happy to oblige with an encore.  
  
From the kitchen Tenchi laughed lightly to himself, shaking his head. He dried another dish and spoke up, assuming Aeka was listening as she continued with the washing in strict silence.  
  
"I remember that book, those stories with Alice and all that 'nonsense'," he chuckled again, "it figures he'd pick it up."  
  
The dishes clattered noisily in the next sink and he turned a startled glance at Aeka's back, seeming cramped for trying to straighten too fast.  
  
"Who-who is Alice?" She asked meekly.  
  
"Alice, oh, she's just a character in a children's story." Tenchi explained casually. "She goes down rabbit holes and through mirrors and meets all these strange creatures. I've heard the author was using hallucinogens when he wrote it."  
  
A recent memory brought on by his explanation drained the joy from his face while Aeka managed to close her eyes and breathe. They continued with the dishes in unwritten silence.  
  
"Ah, here we go, this one's my favorite so far."  
  
Sasami grinned in anticipation and pressed her chin into her knees as Seita cleared his throat.  
  
"Now try to wait till I'm finished to ask questions. If any words seem unfamiliar it's because they only exist in this poem." The disclaimer made her lean in closer with a half grin of double interest.  
  
His narration began in a sensual flow, somewhat softened and darkened with ghost story smoke. Even though it wasn't being read in its original language, the words still came together with precise eloquence.  
  
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe." For a tiny breath and a few rapid blinks, the little princess was ready to ask, but didn't know what. Instead she leaned, tilted her head, and tightened her brow at a very important puzzle.  
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" Scared pink fascination gorged Sasami's eyes and attracted the narrator's for less than a moment.  
"He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought---so rested he by the Tumtum tree, and stood awhile in thought. And as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame---came wiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came."  
  
A smoky buzz had been rising up and now conquered Seita's campfire voice. Tenchi chuckled a little, making the dishes gleam as Aeka made them rattle.  
"One, two! One, two! And through and through---the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!---He left it dead, and with its head he went galumphing back.---"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!---O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy.  
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe." Circling the story back into his softer tone, Seita looked up from the book with a satisfied smile. He watched Sasami blink fiercely and shake some comprehension into her head.  
  
"That was even weirder than the first one...what was it called, anyway?"  
  
"'Jabberwock', of course."  
  
"It was kinda creepy too." Sasami looked mildly down at Ryo-ohki, who cocked her head in confusion, soon recognizing the need to be of comfort and snuggling into the young princess's lap.  
  
"Hm, I suppose so," the narrator's voice shrugged calmly then smiled at his audience again, "but at least the hero always slays the monster in the end."  
  
His attempt to sound sagely was laced with almost intimidating confidence. Sasami took quiet solace in the texture of Ryo-ohki's fur.  
  
"Will you guys keep it down, I'm ^trying^ to sleep." Ryoko grumbled from the rafter, her surliness rimmed with something more and less than exhaustion.  
  
"Sorry Ryoko, I almost forgot you were up there." Sasami apologized.  
  
Ryoko rolled over without another sound.  
  
"Sasami." Aeka called almost too softly to be heard. Sasami turned, her attention soon drawn to the forceful way her sister was drying her hands.  
  
"I think that's enough strange stories for one night, I don't want you having any more nightmares."  
  
"Come on Aeka, just one more." The request came in a whine almost too immature to be taken seriously.  
  
"Just go to bed, Sasami!" Ryoko snapped again. "Aeka always knows best, just ask her."  
  
The snide and lazy tone in her comment made Tenchi frown and notice Aeka's knuckles twist whiter than her towel. He waited in defeated and resentful silence for a response, but none came, and he thought for a fearful moment that she might be truly biting her tongue.  
  
"Come along Sasami." Authority hushed itself tight enough to shatter nerves.  
  
"Ohhhkaaay." A long sigh trailing out as Sasami shifted her position and for the first time, Tenchi saw Seita taken by surprise. Sasami leaned forward and hugged his neck with tender familiarity.  
  
"Night, Seita. Thank you for the story." Her voice was so solemn it gave the impression that sleep itself was punishment. The story-man never took his hands off the book, and the unsure expression still stuck to his face as he watched her go.  
  
"Good night Sasami, good night Aeka." Tenchi offered warmly and received in kind, though a little more softly from the elder.  
  
"Good night---daughters of Jurai." Seita offered in an almost nostalgic whisper, looking down at the intricate pictures on the books cover. He set it on the coffee table and stretched out on the couch with a long breath.  
  
"Sleep well, Tenchi."  
  
The serene voice from the host's couch was polite and final. Tenchi looked down with a friendly half grin and began walking towards the stairs.  
  
"You too, Seita."  
  
An eerie silence followed to make him pause on the first step, thinking he'd forgotten something. He trotted over to the kitchen, turned off the light, and returned. A quarter of the way up the stairs and he stopped again, realizing that no one had said 'good night' to Ryoko. There was no snore, and he couldn't see more than the tips of her hair, he wondered if she'd fallen asleep already. After considering saying it to her regardless, something heavy weighed down in his chest. He sighed silently, steps slowing till he reached and eased around the door to his room.  
  
---  
  
Sleep approached as cool breezes across his face and smooth wooden balls echoing in his stomach. His muscles stretched out like basking lizards that care not that we know not if they grin. Soft blankets enveloped his skin with a relaxing caress. As accustomed perception began its eager yet polite farewell, his lips slipped to the side and began to crumple in a sneer.  
  
Tenchi took a deep breath and offered his face back to serenity with the hope of continuing his previous path.  
  
'I will sleep now', he thought sternly as he offered himself to all the surrounding comforts. But as fast as slumber approached, an urgency stood in its path. The need to relieve the stress building deep within him would not be ignored despite his attempts to reason that it could wait till ^after^ he'd had a good night's rest.  
  
The alluring embrace of unconsciousness was thrown aside in a flurry of sheets as he sat up, put his hands on his knees, and frustrated at the floor. He looked back longingly at the indentation on his pillow but felt helpless under the impatient glare of acknowledged procrastination. Then and there it was loud and clear that he should have taken care of his gut- feeling sooner.  
  
"No way out, I have to do it now."  
  
Mumbles dragged him grudgingly to his feet. He put on his robe and walked into the hallway, stepping lightly so as not to wake anyone, but maintaining an expression of stern exasperation.  
  
---  
  
Ryoko's beam wasn't uncomfortable so long as she kept her hands behind her head. She convinced herself that it would be quite satisfactory if the thought of Tenchi's cozy-looking bed didn't keep popping in. An embarrassed shiver and a hot face courtesy of Zero washed over her at the subsequent idea. Normally the reaction to such naughty fantasies would necessarily be hugged or pinched out, but she still felt too sullen to do more than bite her lip. Blocked adrenaline congealed in her chest, weighing her down further. The sketch was tickling by her feet again, but she told herself that it would only make things worse.  
  
The ceiling had proved completely un-hypnotic---twice, and sleep seemed in no hurry to take pity. The nearest available pattern to sooth her was coming from the couch below. She crinkled her lips.  
  
*I can never tell when that guy's trying to be nice or trying to make a joke. I put his glasses back on the table, but he probably has another pair, or two, or two hundred.  
  
*At least he's not trying to make small talk.  
  
A silent sigh rolled the pirate's gold to the side curiously.  
  
*Is he asleep?  
  
With a little bit of concentration she fazed her body just above the waist, letting it sink through the wood to the other side. A mass of Cyan hair, then a face, then a neck and shoulders appeared over the couch, creating a fair imitation of turning upwards during a freefall. She looked Seita over from head to toe.  
  
His face was deathly calm and emphasized by almost emaciated hands folded neatly over a slender chest. The only part of his position that would have mismatched a coffin was his bare feet, crossed at the ankles. Looking at the proportionately long and narrow feet, she chuckled once through her nose to wonder why they weren't painted like his fingers. By moving slowly her phasing atoms were barely a whisper above Seita's own breathing. Back on the pillar again she frowned, jealous of the relaxed time he seemed to have doing everything, and busying herself to think of a some way to make sure his head didn't start to swell as much as Aeka's.  
  
*Well there are those clothes for one. I still think they're just another trick. I bet he needs to make them up; probably not another man in the galaxy that would be caught looking like such a---  
  
* I bet Tenchi would never wear purple and green like that---surprised he doesn't do chores in a maid's outfit.  
  
Ryoko caught her giggle just in time, picturing hairy chicken legs dangling out the bottom of a little ruffled skirt. Once calmed, she listened for any changes. His breathing was harder to hear than anyone else's, and she could tell by the slight whistle that he kept his mouth closed. Another excessively perfect quality; even Aeka snored sometimes. Each breath came not only slow, but long, sounding more like somebody trying to mediate than sleep. She listened closer and narrowed her eyes in further fascination at how much air he could take in. Remembering his serene face, the strange sleep tactic seemed worth a try. Instead of breathing casually, she tried to imitate the man on the bottom bunk. The first deep breath couldn't even follow through as something caught her nose.  
  
*That's---Tenchi's cologne, with Tenchi underneath it!  
  
Footsteps crept lightly in the upstairs hallway.  
  
*Is Tenchi coming down?  
  
She sniffed and listened again.  
  
*He is! But why? In all the time I've been sleeping out here he's never once come out for a snack or even a glass of water, that must mean-  
  
Ryoko's heart pushed air from her throat into her eyes.  
  
*But-but ^why^?! I don't understand, did he leave something out here? What if he wants something? Would he come out to ask for it an hour after going to bed? What if---what if he wants to ^talk^?  
  
*But to Seita? Oh hell! What if he wants to talk to me---damn-damn-damn! Does he want to apologize for being so harsh before? Does he---  
  
Of all her fantasies, the declaration of love series always fought to the frontline. Ryoko started to breathe more anxiously, the hope and consequent fear building up in her like a seizure.  
  
*What am I going to do?! He's in the living room now, ARGH! Maybe I should pretend I'm still asleep, yeah, I should-  
  
"Are either of you awake?"  
  
Tenchi's voice rushed over her like a bucket sized ice cube. The shock of him speaking was doubled by the tone he used; it was quiet, but it wasn't a whisper. He seemed to know they were both awake and was speaking this way only to keep from waking anyone else. Ryoko bit her lip and hugged herself.  
  
Seita's pooling breath rippled and splashed with a faint snort, he cleared his throat and shifted on the couch.  
  
"Tenchi? What brings you out here?" His waking voice was faint, but not as jumbled as most people sounded after stolen sleep.  
  
"I'm sorry to ask you this, Seita, but...could you give Ryoko and I some privacy, I need to talk to her." The quiet voice was clearly not only for consideration, Tenchi was nervous, focused, but nervous.  
  
Ryoko looked down at her chest, surprised and relieved that her heart hadn't shot out and up through the roof in an explosion of ribs and lumber. Her surreal hysteria calmed down to overwhelming panic.  
  
"Alright, Tenchi." The reply below was polite if still slightly confused. There was a silent pause, followed by lacing boots. Ryoko leaned over enough to catch a glimpse of the scene.  
  
"I'll be taking a walk along the dock till you're finished."  
  
"Thank you, Seita." Tenchi answered without looking up or uncrossing his arms.  
  
Though she couldn't believe it, and knew she would never admit it, Ryoko had leaned back out of sight to send out telepathy imploring Seita to stay. She listened to his footsteps with growing agony till the door sounded her demise. The shaking simply would not stop.  
  
"Ryoko, are you awake?" Tenchi asked in a plane yet still weighted tone.  
  
*Go down there! Get your but down there NOW! Pretending to be asleep won't work this time and you don't want to make him angry again do you?!  
  
Ryoko teleported down and stood on the couch, and instantly regretted it when she remembered how much that power unnerved him. His value of the furniture seemed secondary.  
  
"W-What do you want to talk about, Tenchi?" Her stutter was a stronger and more coherent reply than she would have imagined, though still no encouragement.  
  
"Sit down Ryoko." Tenchi's frankness was too solemn to be rude. He walked over to the window while Ryoko stepped down from stressed cushions and took a single step towards him, her right hand struggling to reach out to but merely shaking at the waist.  
  
"We've been living in the same house for a while now."  
  
She was mute and nearly petrified, but she nodded, assuming he could see her in the windows reflection the way she could see him.  
  
"It's been almost two years, hasn't it Ryoko?"  
  
Another nod filled in for her while he took a long breath.  
  
"Since you...since I let you out of the cave, my life has just been so---so strange. We all almost got killed fighting Kagato, then Professor Clay, then there was that fiasco with Aeka's parents---then things were pretty quiet for a while. But I guess it was pretty silly of me to think I could go out into space again without some more trouble finding me."  
  
Tenchi's chuckle was stillborn as he pressed a hand against the glass and hung his head slightly.  
  
"I try to tell myself that all these brushes with death always have a happy ending; yeah, Seita's a good guy to have around, but he's going to get bored of this place eventually, I can tell. I know I told Aeka and Sasami they could stay here as long as they wanted, but their father isn't going to let them actually live here, sooner or later he'll come back and he won't take no for an answer." His voice was starting to waver now, emotion building a swaying tower word by word.  
  
"Wh-" Ryoko couldn't even decide what question to ask much less ask it at an audible volume.  
  
"Mihoshi has her police work, and I guess Washu could have already gone back to the science academy without too much trouble."  
  
A strong air of uncharacteristic bitterness crept into Tenchi's monologue. He took a breath and hesitated. Ryoko crossed her arms, lowering her head to hide her clenched teeth and watering eyes. This was all going in a bad direction, and she knew her name was next on the list. She wanted to cry out, wrap her arms around his neck and beg him to stop talking this way. The concentration required to restrain herself was so great that it was rubbing off on the rest of her senses, causing her to levitate slightly.  
  
"And then there's you Ryoko---the person who started it all." His voice was distant again, he turned around to face her but she couldn't bare the sight of anything above his feet. The simplest part of her wanted to phase out as far away as possible from this physically sickening suspense. She almost attempted it, but she could hear the grave seriousness before it even made its way out Tenchi's throat, and it kept her paralyzed.  
  
"I-"  
  
He hesitated, clumsy with conversation even when consumed by its importance. A windy vibration rang in her ears as she clenched her jaw and eyes closed with enough force to turn her face inside out. Slowly, she was able to lift her head, simultaneously enraged and relieved to see him looking down at the floor.  
  
"I just don't know Ryoko, I know you're not trying to ^kill me^ anymore, but-"  
  
"Tenchi, I-" Her hollow moan suggested sobbing, but her eyes were stretched watertight.  
  
"I keep telling myself that you're going to change, that any day now you're going to stop fighting with Aeka, stop drinking like the town lush, and start acting like a civil person." His voice was getting more strained now, a ghostly combination of anger and sadness. Weak enough to faint at his feet, Ryoko felt her jaw shake in such tiny rapid movements than it was almost still.  
  
"But, you're not really going to change, are you? Every time you try to turn around it's-it's like it's just an act to get my attention. I don't know why I keep getting my hopes up." He read on through her rough draft epitaph with badly coping cheeriness.  
  
"I care about you Ryoko, same as all the rest, but I don't know what real good it's going to do anybody if you stay here the rest of your life. I'm not going to be here for-ever; I'm going to transfer to another school eventually, probably need to live with a roommate or two, and I couldn't just have you appearing and disappearing and going through walls and who knows what else all the time."  
  
The sound of Tenchi swallowing filled in for Ryoko's heartbeat, long since muffled.  
  
"I wonder a lot lately, if---if it wouldn't be better if all you girls would just---^get bored with me already^. I'm nothing special, I just wish I could have a normal life again, no more explosions or other dimensions or-"  
  
He sucked in a ragged breath and hugged himself back to a focus.  
  
"I've been as patient as I can think to be Ryoko, but I don't think that my home, that this ^planet^, is the right place for you."  
  
Knees that had endured through centuries of battle dropped into the floor with a soft thud. Fingers that had done even more could only worm into the carpet. Ryoko's lungs stopped, but she conveniently couldn't register any other pain or thought. One emotion she'd barely understood during Zero's assimilation presented a loathsome inversion of itself, and it would only allow her to writhe, moaning desperate incoherencies.  
  
"Tenchi...pl-please..."  
  
"Ryoko, try to understand." Tenchi's own emotionally shaken voice was a sincere, yet cheap imitation of regret.  
  
"^Please Tenchi---don't---don't throw me out^!" She raised a hand and clawed at the sheets of her deathbed.  
  
"Ryoko, you can take Ryo-ohki anywhere you want, you have the whole ^universe^!" The reassurance barely sounded believable to him even as he offered it.  
  
"I-I don't want the universe, I just want-" The burn of carpet against her forehead went unnoticed. Tenchi froze as his first guest crawled to his feet and clutched at the flannel around his shin.  
  
"I just want ^you^ Tenchi!" Scream to whisper and over and through again till she finally collapsed on the later.  
  
"Please Ryoko, don't do this." Tenchi's own whisper brought back his previous suppression of anger.  
  
"Tenchi, I---I love-"  
  
"No Ryoko, you don't."  
  
When dying of dehydration in the desert, freezing on a glacier can seem inviting. Tenchi had answered with callousness in something like the same principle.  
  
Ryoko clutched her head and tried to scream, prayed for everything to wake up or die. She felt Tenchi's hands grasp her under the arms and remained limp to his lift, already apathetic enough to start discarding any comfort as a formality. When he spoke, it was to someone who'd lost a favorite and easily replaced toy, an almost condescending compassion.  
  
"Don't be so sad Ryoko, we could always write to each other."  
  
Her shivers were so weak that they stopped halfway up his arms.  
  
Besides, there's plenty of other guys in the universe. Why heck, even that Seita fellow's pretty handsome-"  
  
The inconceivable inappropriateness of his tone was enough to force her to meet him eye to eye while he paused.  
  
"^Don't you think?^"  
  
Pearl cheeks and petal lips spread soft, up and around the bottomless sapphires. At such an intimate distance it all looked painted-on.  
  
***  
  
From the best seat in the house Tenchi rested his elbows on his knees and let out a small sigh of relief. He was ready to tear a piece from a roll of fine quilted luxury when a massive explosion sent a shockwave through the entire house. Appliances and ornaments were upset in every room while he was sent to the floor with an endless white streamer trailing an arch over his head. A similar explosion followed within 30 seconds considerably farther away, but it still rattled every window and every second tooth. In one horrified gasp, and two quick movements to properly use and dispose of the streamer, he was dashing into the hallway with a slight hop to re-secure his pants.  
  
"What in heaven was that!?" Nobuyuki called into the empty hallway, looking about for anyone to answer.  
  
"Dad! What-" Tenchi burst out into the hallway with a gasp.  
  
"I'm still trying to figure it out." Nobuyuki whined and flinched as Aeka blurred past.  
  
"Lord Tenchi, are you all right?" Aeka called out, clasping onto his arm and startling a yelp out of him.  
  
"Oh, Aeka, it's you." He exhaled.  
  
"Of course it's me." Aeka responded anxiously, before blushing at her handful of tense muscle.  
  
"Ten-chi-" Sasami mumbled tiredly, wandering out after her sister.  
  
The few seconds of silence extended themselves as a psychotic battle cry erupted faintly in the distance. Everyone exchanged knowing glances and tried to stabilize themselves for the next shockwave to pass through the house.  
  
***  
  
A rain of pebbles and debris fell on Ryoko's battle armor as insignificant as sea spray on a crab's shell. Her thin energy saber shone through clouds of smoke and dust as she flew the perimeter of a smoldering crater. The weapon remained tilted at the ready, her arm rigid while the rest of her body sailed in the other direction with a violent jerk, enraged facial gestures, and a sharp whip of hair.  
  
Approximately ten meters to her left a white circle began to dilate parallel with the ground to the size of a manhole cover. It made no sound, gave no light, and failed to even stir the dust around it. Slender hands stretched out of it as delicately as a fairy waking from a nap within a budded flower. Emerald fabric hung back around the elbows but fell back to the wrists when palms pressed firmly along the sides of the tunnel and pulled the rest up and out. Once his torso was raised Seita sat on his rear, dangling his legs in the pool of emptiness. He brought his knees up slowly, keeping them bent, and positioned himself in a crouch before standing on the edges of the hole with a show of height.  
  
Gold spun from sand blew back in elegant tendrils while he stretched his hands behind his back, watching Ryoko with smug amusement. In a contemplative set of movements he held his right elbow then traced his right thumb and every successive finger across his lips. Each digit spread a different color across his lips that his eyeliner instantly mirrored, moving from a blood red, to a cloudy turquoise, to a tart orange, eventually settling on a deep violet. He glanced down with a satisfied smile to make sure it matched his pants.  
  
"I guess it's a good thing I stepped back before congratulating myself on a performance well-delivered," sensual arrogance chuckled, "you might have sent half the house-"  
  
A blast of energy large enough to drill a train tunnel enveloped and interrupted him. Ryoko had destroyed him three times already, each time seeing him come out of his hole in a nearby location. She told herself that he had merely dove into his bunker at the last minute, that if she pretended not to see him the next time he appeared she might catch him off guard.  
  
The confidence he nearly sang, however, seemed to come from something much deeper than quick reflexes. Her distant, logical part, called out that such direct attacks wouldn't be of any use. But just as his voice served to confirm this, the very sound of it filled her ears like scalding bile, and all potential meaning was consumed in fury.  
  
Ryoko couldn't see through the fiery glow of such a huge attack, and thus couldn't tell if her target had retreated in time. While watching for the white of his eye again, the single focus of her emotions steadily fed into her sword, almost tuning it into a thick staff. A perfect reflection of her stepped out of an oblivion portal a boulder's throw away from the original. It held its energy sword like a bored aristocrat's cane, and characteristically leaned against it with a casual sigh. His throaty chuckle was faint as a witch cackling defiantly from deep within her own cauldron. She whirled around, furious enough with herself to spare some for her target audience.  
  
"-^into oblivion^." Seita's chuckle sharpened itself for itself. The original reflection opened her eyes a little wider.  
  
"Dear, dear Ryoko. Would you just ^look at yourself^." He shook his head with a succession of tongue clicks. The cheap pun met another battle roar, drug up from her subconscious store of pain like a twisted vehicle from a drainage ditch.  
  
Ryoko leapt and swung down at him with so much force that the path of her energy blade formed a giant luminous sickle. She landed sharply amid the diagonal trench slashed out of the earth directly behind her latest imitation. When the debris settled again she turned to gloat over both halves of a surely bisected charlatan. Her reflection leaned away from its sword, dissipated it, and turned to regard her with a disappointed half- frown.  
  
"I suppose that sight ^would^ be wearing a little thin on you by now, wouldn't it?" Cyan spikes faded and fell into blonde curtains, brushing a different set of sharp feminine features over Ryoko's face. Seita's height and attire absorbed the battle-ready form as he crossed his arms and began to pace thoughtfully.  
  
The pirate's brilliant gold recognized itself as lead, weighing down her attack as she crouched in horrified awe.  
  
*He-he-didn't even move, it went right through him...just like before!  
  
Her sword dissipated as she clutched at the ground between her knees, waiting with bloodlust for another sign of vulnerability.  
  
"Now let me see, maybe a different variation on the search for the original." Seita thought aloud as he stopped his pacing and leaned forward with an indulgent smile. Beginning on either side of him exact reflections stepped out from behind each other again and again. The shoulder-to- shoulder line gradually curved and surrounded Ryoko, whose warrior eyes instinctively remained on the nucleus. Within seconds, however, the circle of challenging glares faded back into the same dissatisfied one-sided grimace.  
  
"No-no-^no^," the copies sighed, flicking their wrists dismissively in a perfectly aligned choreography, "that ruse was tired even before my time." The Seitas began to fade away more with each tired shake of their heads.  
  
Ryoko tensed when she noticed that the point of origin was dissipating as well, she whirled around in her prone crouch to find him standing, predictably, directly behind her. He was massaging his chin and seemed to be contemplating the few meters of ground between them.  
  
"Hm, I never really had much of a talent for improvising, but it wouldn't do-" Ryoko lunged for his throat, sailing through him and landing roughly on the ground with a hard grunt, "to keep you waiting." He finished his sentence with mild annoyance.  
  
The hum of teleportation softly echoed Ryoko's throaty growl. She reappeared ten meters above her landing place and reformed her sword. Seita looked up at the promise of murder and relaxed. His arms fell to the sides, fingers moving and flexing like perpetual centipede legs. As he focused, she got her first good look.  
  
They were real, but the malice there was not for her, nor was it a facade adapted for the sake of intimidation. His pupils reminded her of fan blades moving so fast that they could be seen individually, moving all over her body without leaving her face. The unmistakable spite was made even more unsettling by the boyish softness in his cheeks and the feminine sway of his hair. She was being watched the way he must often watch the universe itself; perhaps with the bitter detachment of someone viewing their own squandered and naive childhood.  
  
"You really are upset, aren't you Ryoko? You've feared the night Tenchi would come with your 'eviction notice' for quite some time. The thought of going through the rest of your existence as a hopeless and shunned monster; it haunts you like a murdered sibling."  
  
With every word Seita's voice descended more into his subhuman hiss, the syllables stretching and sharpening. Ryoko raised her sword to the ready, wanting to hide the terrible face behind it but too experienced to let him out of her sight.  
  
"But there is something far more loathsome than solitude haunting you- " he paused and lifted his nose, stirring the air surrounding them as he inhaled. "I can smell it...^fermenting^ at the base of your spine. Your loneliness is but a single angle to the star of ^failure^, of having to surrender in humiliation." His arms bent upward at the elbows, his fingers limp save for the smallest, their sharpened nails pointed inward like venomous barbs to match the completely transformed rasp of his voice.  
  
Chaotic clouds of response thundered into Ryoko's quivering jaw and kept it locked tight. Her opponent continued with his newly affirmed tone.  
  
"That is why you attack me with so much force. ^That^ is what tortures you, not the fear of being discarded, but the fear of being ^defeated^!" A laugh poured out in searing gasps, the validity of his insight seemingly unquestionable.  
  
"And so, my lovely little space pirate, my vengeful little demon--- since you simultaneously think so much, and so little, of how truly dangerous I am---I think I should put more effort into our session."  
  
Seita's hair fell out in locks, squirming down to disappear at his feet like a can of worms dumped into a lake. His elegant fingers grew soft then as amorphous as melting taffy, but rather than drip onto his elbows they stretched and poured sideways over his ears. Arm flesh followed, the green of his shirt fading into his bare gargoyle's scalp. Ryoko's battle to ignore the illusion began to fail as his entire body split up the center and curled in waxy ropes.  
  
A single head floated up to face her, a scheme ready to be unsheathed from his wide smile. Ryoko ground her teeth and savored the destruction in her weapon, forcefully reminding herself that it was real. Seita's head chuckled cleverly and grew larger, then larger still, looking down his nose at her till he was expanded enough for her to have flown up it. She considered such an attack with violent revulsion, thinking it might throw him off, hopping she could fly straight to his twisted brain and hack it to pieces like a mound of sour custard.  
  
Regardless of any plans, she was nearly petrified. A giant head was not so frightening in itself, but Seita's eyes in this context made her innards churn. She reasoned that he must have opened one of his portals nearby.  
  
"I know this is hardly better, but at least it's more-"  
  
Seita seemed to be considering an adjective then deciding the modifier was enough. His lips remained motionless, as if his smile had stretched too far and stuck. Instead a few teeth here and there retracted into gum or trembled in it. Something red and wet tried to push through behind them, making him sweat, or rather glow with a thick excretion of oil. Ryoko figured he was getting closer rather than larger by his breath, the same temperature as the air and same smell as one of Kagato's particularly extensive massacres, exactly the same.  
  
"Your childhood is nonexistent---and your adolescence seems perpetual, so is it really possible to explore your past? No, I'll need far more than slavery-history if I'm to go to the trouble of getting inside you."  
  
At the last words his brow bounced upward ever so slightly before it tightened down further, but its size commanded what his tone suggested. Ryoko let her sword dissipate only to focus on two beads swelling in both claws.  
  
"We need to scrape up the ^filth^!"  
  
A few teeth teetered like high notes, maggots the size of carrots crawled beneath the skin of his chin up into his lips, the group splitting then meeting again beneath his nose where they disappeared. Ryoko relaxed her gritted teeth till they spilled out, some stuck together with a green film.  
  
"That swallowed septic perception."  
  
Both eyes blinked slow, reopening with long eyelashes. The right pair stretched and flattened, growing into thin cuts that opened perfect redlines all the way till they met at the back of his head. Winking to brush over Ryoko like fan feathers the left pair curved inward and hardened into teeth, biting down with a dead wood snap. His eye drooled down like egg white full of tiny sapphire yolks.  
  
"It must be ^poisoning^ you."  
  
It took his face a moment to re-glamorize itself with a fresh coat of silver and wine makeup, enough to begin scrawling itself with infected green veins. Houseflies as big as heads began to crawl out from their pus cradles.  
  
"Rotting your ^in^-sides!"  
  
The gurgle slime cheer was barely coherent, barely audible above the screams that matched the smell of her past massacre. Ryoko raised both hands, sucking in as much air as she could before hurling a gigantic beam of energy that would have been too large for him to swallow even in this form. Screaming till her throat stung, till it burned, till it threatened to shred into bloody ribbons, she reflexively turned away from the continuous blast that would surely have blinded her.  
  
***  
  
"Aeka, Ryoko and Seita are both gone!" Tenchi turned back from the  
banister overlooking the living room with wide eyes and a strained neck. Aeka only stared back.  
  
Before she could respond he dashed downstairs and froze at the back door, his father and the two princesses a few steps behind him. They all watched in awe as a beam of reddish orange light rose into the sky from a position at least a mile away. Without taking his eyes off the foreboding sight, he spoke in a calm and almost commanding tone.  
  
"Aeka, try to wake Mihoshi, Sasami, try to get Little Washu to answer her door."  
  
No reply, no matter, Tenchi opened the door and broke into a run, vaulting over the porch banister. Sasami broke the shock first and ran after him, calling without any practice for a final goodbye.  
  
"Tenchi!"  
  
He stopped and turned, visibly anxious not to be delayed.  
  
"What are you going to do?" She continued despairingly.  
  
Tenchi looked at the ground solemnly, and answered with little reassurance.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
Sasami watched as he sprinted into the wilderness.  
  
Nobuyuki noticed Aeka's eyes as they followed her sister's dash to Washu's door. The nervousness in them was so great that it doubled his own. While Sasami called out pitifully to the scientist between knocks, he forced himself to be recognized.  
  
"Miss-Miss Aeka, do you know what's going on?" He managed, somehow, to demand a direct answer with the most timid of voices.  
  
Aeka looked up at him, for a moment he was afraid she might run crying into his arms. Instead, she looked down as soon as their eyes meet and answered in a ghostly voice.  
  
"I---I can't say."  
  
He could only scratch his head as the princess hurried off to the lake.  
  
***  
  
Ryoko fell from the sky, landing amidst the tangled roots of a large tree, overturned by an earlier failed attack. The air burned her lungs, but exhaustion demanded it. She pulled herself up to her knees by one of the surrounding roots and coughed.  
  
She couldn't remember, or even believe in a blast that could drain her like this, amid the growing aches she tried to comfort herself with mental images of a gigantic head with a bloody hole through it crashing to the earth. Maybe she'd using the skull as a summer home. Not fully satisfied with that, she envisioned a lanky girly-man screaming in agony, his skin searing off as he was pushed back into his personal hellhole, too damaged to open it up again, doomed to float forever with raw flesh that could not heal.  
  
She chuckled morbidly as she pulled herself to her feet and leaned back against the mass of roots, smiling at the depressing imitation of looking up through barren trees. For every moment that silence remained was a divine kiss of relief, seducing her senses to relax. Not yet. Each breath and movement of the wind was thoroughly scanned for signs of the fool who'd thought he could play with ^her^ mind. For what seemed like half an hour she waited, gradually starting to smile and rest her eyes. The gem on her wrist still burned with her exhaustion, and she looked down at it gruffly.  
  
A boy and a girl giggled in the dreamy distance of Ryoko's mind. Her eyes flew up and she stood upright with a sharp pain in her knees. A low mist was rolling across the ground, revealing the grass in random patches the way a cluster of clouds reveals the sky. From ten meters away she saw the laughter.  
  
Barely more than a single meter tall, two naked dolls were escorting Seita towards her. Their plump sexless bodies were segmented loosely, the weak motors propelling their limbs made them sway and lumber. Their heads, both roughly shaved with a dull razor, lolled hollowly about on their shoulders. Ryoko looked at a few missed longer hairs more closely and recoiled to see only one eye shimmer in the moonlight. It had winked.  
  
She bit her lip, pinched the gem in her wrist, but to no avail. This hallucination could not be a nightmare, and once again Ryoko considered trying to self-destruct, nauseated by the idea of anyone watching her mounting this much fear. Every suffering she'd endured and conquered tried in vain to comfort her, but the putrid essence approaching would not be compared.  
  
Seita walked alongside his bodyguards with perverse anticipation, moving in a guise of slow motion, wanting her to take in every nuance of his reentrance. He would clearly not be content till she collapsed at his feet, begging him not to release the surreal terrors held behind the emotionless faces of his stripped and broken toys. Tasting the verge of another desperate scream, Sayta stroked the dolls' heads like the arm rests of his newly acquired throne. Responding like faithful mastiffs, they began to speak, or rather, to recite a short verse in the voices of children created for the calmly wicked. Innocence flowed out of their square jaws in overlapping rhythms. Ryoko clutched the gooseflesh on her arms.  
  
"Useless water. Useless flame."  
  
"The Ghost of Madness killed the Ghost of Pain."  
  
On and on they repeated, jaws bobbing in sync despite the still less than zombie-like movements of their limbs. Ryoko covered her ears, ready to crush her skull if their draining song didn't end. She opened her eyes for a split second and saw them nearly standing over her. The voices had not grown louder as they closed in.  
  
Nothing was there; it was all an illusion, everything save Seita, yet this hellish glimpse into his mind offered more than enough. What ever she'd seen in his eyes was declaring itself, and would not be silent till she crumbled before it. One more glance at their approach, one last line of their song, and her wall of denial fell.  
  
Ryoko knew him then, a perversion of the line between a being and an incarnation, his power untouchable, unaccountable to her own. There was nothing that she could do to defeat and, she realized, nothing she could do to escape---this. Falling to the will of someone, not by a show of their strength but merely by a recognition of it, the idea welled up in a cry of helpless violation. With the last ounce of confidence, the last spark in her gem, she forced steel beams through the rubber sticks in her knees and stared back at her tormentor with desperate defiance. To her elation, the movement surprised him enough for the dolls to stop their chanting  
  
"The Ghost of-"  
  
Interrupted, relaxing his grin, Seita watched curiouser and curiouser as Ryoko leaned back into her own stare, cold and unwavering. She reached to the sides, grasping a large gnarled root in each hand with a ritualistic breath.  
  
"Oh?" He hummed up an eyebrow. "I thought you'd finally understood- --but if you've thought of some grand new strategy, by all means share it."  
  
Ryoko's entire face melted with the exhilarating terror of entertaining a final desperate attempt. She sunk her hands into the thick tentacles of earth and wood as if they were clay. The crossed and crashing scars of her psychosis similarly twisted Seita's smug smile into a thin line of genuine interest.  
  
"You want ghosts?"  
  
She hissed the last drop of violence in her, seeming to draw encouragement from the overt flux in the surrounding atmosphere. Seita looked above her and nearly gaped at the black within black vapor seeping out of the cracks in the fallen tree's bark.  
  
"I'll ^give you ghosts^!"  
  
The vapors swirled around them both and converged directly above Ryoko, each melting into the next to form the curling serpentine body, wide claws and grotesque head of a freshly extracted 'evil spirit'. Its smoky form loomed over them at least six meters in height. Relatively tiny rubies gleamed in its eyes above a cylindrical jaw that ended in a hanging mass of pointed tentacles that ungulated chaotically as it arched its neck to the sky and let out a wretched scream. The sound poured over them not unlike the reverberation of forceful vomiting in a plastic bucket.  
  
This access to such reinforcements took the current champ by unmasked surprise. The new challenger stretched its arms and clenched its claws in a show of power while its nearest targets remained paralyzed with exhaustion or fascination. Seita checked back down on Ryoko, no longer able to stand. He bent slightly and regarded her with an almost proud smile, yet her almost fetal position nullified it.  
  
Without looking away from her, he straightened himself and raised his index and middle finger in a loose gesture. Ryoko turned her head weakly and caught a glimpse of the two dolls pulling themselves into the air on invisible strings, she watched with a prayer repeating too rapidly in her mind to be spoken. Each of the escorts spread their arms out in an unnerving cross between trying to frighten a group of children and invite them in for hugs. The tentacles around the new challenger's mouth pulled apart in sinister anticipation a moment before it brought both its claws in an upward slash directly through its opponents. Seita did not even watch his own minstrels fade away like unmemorable tunes. The sadistic triumph in Ryoko's smile stole enough energy to make her hang her head again, nearly hyperventilating through clenched teeth and crying helplessly now at the thought of what would happen to her after the spirit was through with the smaller ghost.  
  
Tentacles ungulated and spread out, curving inwards again like anxious fingers. Already beady eyes narrowed further on the gentle strands of hair below him. It supported each of its hands on a large root and bent down to consume the tall drink of fruit juice in one swallow.  
  
Blue eyes looked up into red. Seita held his hands behind his back and tilted his head with a mock-innocent smile, all but batting his eyelashes to greet his new opponent. The attacking smoke froze, its eyes too small to convey the emotion displayed in its frantically withdrawing tentacles. Even from Ryoko's slightly obscured perspective, the spirit's next sound turned its first into a lullaby. The ants were nearly clogging the piglet's squealing mouth and were biting and fizzing in a chemical reaction to its saliva. She could have empathized with the fear it had for a direct look, but didn't. The last resort cowered back with mighty claws quivering over its face. It split back into a swarm of dark featureless specters all scattering and retreating back into the tree within the shadow of a minute.  
  
Ryoko had almost forgotten the feeling of suffocation, but when it returned could at least remember to grasp at her throat. Confronted with her own miserable and humiliated end, her own body began to turn on her; she clutched at her skull and dented the ground with her forehead, grasping for a few last sobs before The Ghost of Madness took possession of her.  
  
"Well, that was certainly unexpected." He began in a casual voice still slightly laced with his subhuman hiss. "Ethereal life forms are very tricky, Ryoko. I'll have to get Washu to tell me how you are able to extract them like that.  
  
"It's very difficult to find them, much less exploit them. They are generally solitary beings, yet word travels among them fairly quickly." Seita chuckled to himself and took another step towards the broken Ryoko. "I guess I've already made quite a name for myself."  
  
Ryoko began to shiver between decrepit coughs.  
  
"Once intimidated they seem easy enough to influence. I take it that if you'd had all your gems you'd have been able to send him after me despite his fear. Of course, you might also have destroyed this entire planet in your efforts to---redistribute my energy."  
  
Fistfuls of dirt shook out with her sobs. Ryoko tried to let her senses collapse, to end this cruel delay, get to the pain that could only be beyond anything Kagato could have conceived. Seita continued speaking nonetheless, a captivated audience, a freshly broken slave; one in the same.  
  
"I've read that E.L.F's, like your friend there, were created to guard large energy sources, and when these were abandoned or exhausted they had seek out new ones to patrol." Crouching down low enough to kneel on Ryoko's head, Seita's fingertips connected before his face, focusing through the cage onto every nuance of her shattered will. A crueler smile stretched across his face again as to properly slice out a gentler hiss.  
  
"Indeed Ryoko, what will happen when ^you^ are abandoned, exhausted, and obsolete?" He leaned in closer, fluttering the hair over her ear. "Who's mercy, who's ^pity^ will you accept when curled into a broken ball---at the feet of a dainty illusion."  
  
A loud snap moved Ryoko's head up. She could see the veins in Seita's arm still stretched out beside her, he was perched so perfectly on his toes that he must have been propping himself up against the tree. Two snaps this time, directly into her ear. The same smile he'd given her after taking off his Tenchi mask squirmed down her throat; a few remaining muscles sent the nausea back down.  
  
"Will you make me ^touch you^ to lift you back up again," disgust curled his lip, "or will you stand up defiant again, to attack me like a blind and toothless dog. Perhaps you'll remain silent while I-"  
  
Seita had lifted her up and rested her back against the roots, gripping her shoulders gently and holding her at arms length. But as he flamboyantly poured iodine into the wounds of her humiliation he was surprised to be interrupted not by an energy sword, or even a fist, but by a thick drop of spittle flung onto his cheek.  
  
For a moment Ryoko was surprised that her true last attack had not phased through him like all the others. But the way Seita stood and stepped back, the way he closed his eyes and lifted a hand to his face made it seem he'd allowed, even wanted it.  
  
He sighed his own seduction, touching the wetness with his index and middle finger. The shadow of hateful defiance remaining in the gold coins was already undermined by the quivering purse of lips, but it descended completely into horrified disgust as he closed his eyes and further massaged her insult into his skin.  
  
"Oh Ryoko, how proud your mother would be. And how fortunate I am for this fleeting reminder of so many things now lost to me." He smiled softly, vibrating his mad eyes blue cruel. "But my question remains; whose pity will you accept? After being so belittled by me will you be able to withstand the searing, if indirect, condescent?"  
  
Ryoko clutched her arms tightly and bent her head to strangle out a tear.  
  
"Ten-chi."  
  
***  
  
"Tenchiii!" Aeka called out behind him, he turned his head from the path for a second.  
  
"Tenchi! Where are you?!" Mihoshi echoed.  
  
Their search party leader put his hands up to his mouth to call back to them, but let them drop. He'd been so focused on finding Ryoko that he'd set aside any planning on how to handle things once he found her, and Seita, or Seita. That painful weight in his stomach caught up with him first, nearly doubling him over. It was worse this time than anything he'd consider going over the counter for, worse and simply different. For some reason the ordeal with Dr. Clay crossed his thoughts, followed by the pairing of Ryoko's shots at his school to the cannon blast searchlight he'd seen earlier.  
  
*Damn her! What the hell is going on!  
  
"I'm over here!" He bellowed painfully from his renewed sprint.  
  
***  
  
Tenchi's voice was a distant whisper cut through the fog like a flaming comet. Ryoko's eyes tore open and threw themselves around wildly for the source of her name. One laugh at her cheek was enough to bring her back.  
  
"How wonderful; the humiliation you've suffered before me has been most valuable, but the humiliation you'll suffer when your 'savior' gets here...oh, that will be-"  
  
His hands shivered into her shoulders with a decadent giggle. Ryoko could not back any closer against the roots without phasing through them and she still felt far to exhausted to even think of it.  
  
"What will our host think when he discovers how close you came to destroying his home...^our^ home?"  
  
Through everything, she was just lucid enough to sense what he was implying.  
  
"Ryokoooh!" Tenchi's voice rose above a whisper.  
  
Seita looked in his direction then back at Ryoko, his lunatic smile relaxing again into a knowing grin.  
  
"Perhaps it would be better for everyone, especially you and Tenchi, if we kept our little session between us---try to imagine how 'intrusive' my future methods might be." His voice inflated a light joke then disemboweled it, hair flinging itself back, eyes narrowing and never leaving as he stepped away.  
  
"^Ryoko^!" Tenchi would be running past them at any moment.  
  
"I'll take your silence as an agreement. And don't fret about Tenchi, I like him, and enjoy his home. Besides, it's unlikely either of us would benefit from a session."  
  
Ryoko shook her head, agreeing with the ground in tiny shivers.  
  
"I don't disperse poison---anymore than I can dilute it," he added plainly then rasped it up, "I turn it into sake."  
  
Only Seita's footsteps departing then something heavy and rubber popped in her ears when Ryoko slammed her palms into them.  
  
"Over here, Tenchi!"  
  
Delicate hands cupped around a decadent mouth moments before the stoic host came scrambling over a hill. He seemed to notice the fallen tree foremost as he ran up and bent to catch his breath.  
  
"Seita! Wha-Wha-What's going on?" Tenchi panted. "I heard explosion's---and screaming." Midway through noticing Ryoko crouched amid the roots, a formal apology knelt and bowed into his attention.  
  
"Forgive me Tenchi, I---I believe I went too far in testing her abilities, I did not consider the consequences." The normal calm voice sounding distraught with guilt only twisted Tenchi's face with more confusion.  
  
"What?!"  
  
"I am to blame for waking everyone, and for the destruction around your home. Ryoko and I were talking about perhaps exercising out abilities together. We planned to begin tomorrow morning and, good-naturedly, exchanged a few childish insults to prepare for the event. But-but I offended her thoughtlessly and thus should not have been surprised when she began our duel tonight.  
  
"I have only now succeeded in calming her enough to accept my apologies. I had no idea that this would happen, but I am still to blame. I hope that you can see to forgive my foolish and belligerent behavior."  
  
Tenchi scratched the back of his neck, but with a completely perplexed rather than nervous expression. Taking his focus of the head bowed beneath him for the first time, he looked over at Ryoko, still crouched in what looked like exhaustion.  
  
"Are-are you okay Ryoko?" He asked with timid concern.  
  
*Please Tenchi, don't even look at me! Get away from here before I do something desperate again! I beg you...  
  
Ryoko seemed to tense at the sound of his voice, but all he needed to relax was her nod.  
  
"Lord Tenchi!" Aeka nearly screamed when she caught sight of him, and ran to his side as if his life were at stake. She clutched the fabric around his arm again and looked up at him with wild eyes.  
  
"Lord Tenchi, what has-"  
  
"HEY, wait for me!" Mihoshi cried as she ran to join the princess, her police uniform only half assembled in some places.  
  
"It's alright Aeka. Calm down Mihoshi. I think we can all go back to sleep now." Serious relief stared down into their wide, fearful eyes.  
  
"I'll do whatever I can to right the situation Tenchi, please, just tell me." Seita began again in an almost groveling tone from his still humbled position.  
  
"Don't worry about it," he assured unconvincingly, "I'm just glad no one was hurt."  
  
When the next few steps he took back towards the house were not echoed, he turned again. Seita was walking slowly beside Mihoshi, still in apparent disgrace, while Aeka was standing still, looking down at Ryoko.  
  
"Come on you guys, let's try to get some sleep."  
  
He worried about the crouching figure for a moment, then told himself that she would come down when she wanted, as usual. When Aeka turned back towards him her face seemed drained and softened with a lingering mixture of emotions he would have guessed, but not believed, to be empathy.  
  
***  
  
After trying in vain for half an hour, Sasami retreated from the closet door and, feeling helpless, began to cry the path to sleep. After successfully forcing herself away from the night's events, Washu did the same. 


	2. Verse Seven is Mother

Standard Disclaimer:  
  
I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.  
  
Standard Advertisement:  
  
I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.  
  
Standard Procedure:  
  
Love, honor, and obey.  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Seven is Mother-  
  
-Part 1-  
  
Better for knowing barren seeds---senseless killers understand.  
  
The failed midwife will show the way---to justify bloodied hands.  
  
-ZJS  
  
He steers the waterfall spray into a cloud above the canopy, stretching its halo belt to color a flock of black bats, sending white noise throughout the lush green. Perception darts back up to the blue background, sealing, resealing blue to match its eyes. For a forest there had better be more than trees when he looks back down there. Plenty of wind to spare spirals loose leaves up from their churning homes. Some branches grow larger and twist to accommodate him and the glare-less glass beneath his feet. But it wasn't clear. Not enough.  
  
He stops the descent and removes himself from the picture for a better unveiling. A worm-desiccated tree takes the place of just in time for another more invisible look. Just this cancer veins bark tower and its shadow to compliment the clearing, or, maybe no more than a moss-less stone. It must be large enough for his standing when he makes himself from the tree's shadow like a plume of smoke and a crumble of paper.  
  
He steps out into the scattered sunlight standing taller to observe his surroundings, affected disorientation recreating curiosity. A black coat and slacks gleam around his milk skin like volcanic glass, dressy as a dress but able to maintain formality over elegance. Lost or free; fascination banishes what could have been fear when he realizes he's not alone.  
  
She watches him shyly, only half her face visible behind a large tree. Inquisitive yet inviting, the perfect boyish smile to lure the rest of her forward. The flattering wonder he looks upon her halos them both with an inviting blush. She flutters on transparent wings that flicker with better pinks and greens than the waterfall could capture. Her slender young body is covered only by a short dress knitted from silky green moss and leaves like scales. Dainty feet and smooth legs stay together, yet her arms curve gracefully as she moves towards him with a broken branch in one hand. Wings rest and feet touch to the ground as the two face each other half an arm's reach apart. They maintain eye contact even now that she is nearly two heads shorter.  
  
With a slightly anxious smile she lifts her branch up like a torch and removes a single piece of red fruit. The delicate motion releases a jingle of tiny leaves and a few drops of water. He needs little coaxing to allow her to feed it to him. Although the offering is not half a mouthful, the delicious taste savor-slows his jaw enough to pull down his eyelids. Their smiles almost match and as a drop of juice escapes from the corner of his mouth they share a laugh.  
  
The offering is swallowed without so much as a passive whisper. He takes a moment to relish it again alongside every other sensation and the question of how long it has been since he's done so. She breathes in deeply; it has to be the strong musk emanating from the visitor's thick clothes, it must be why his imposing formality is so strangely alluring. The girl in green wavers slightly in eager anticipation for him to open his eyes and see how beautiful she is.  
  
A cold breeze scatters leaves about them, each dead enough for the desert. The man in black, once lost in thought, has found the map's legend and roles it into a sword. His smile deflates, opens his eyes at the speed of memory. There are no new insights, just new inspiration.  
  
The girl in green looks up into his suddenly serious expression and is remotely unnerved. She hides it well and inches closer to be thanked for such generosity. Her small dress tightens slightly as she bats the violet pollen dusted around her eyes and pouts her candy pink lips.  
  
The man in black exhales through a thinly opened mouth and angles his stare, eyes sharp and ridges hard. He smiles smugly at how this excites her, and takes her hands in a gentle motion, holding them against the sides of his face. Her palms are as soft and warm as he expected them to be. She trembles lasciviously and he smiles wider still.  
  
Leaving her hands to hold over his cheeks, his eyes drift into her hair. Her bangs dangle thinly and should tickle; the rest is held in a casual ball by a large metal pin. His fingers float around her head like antennae, this sensual mass of fibers excites him for the moment. He sees the hairpin catch a ray of sunlight and feels the girl in green lightly clench her hands at the lusty spread of teeth between them. In one elegant gesture two fingers pull the pin. With the other hand he collects her wrists and brings them together. While he appears to help her pray, he marvels at the sight of now freely dangling tresses. They are poorly groomed, but color has been smeared through them with a passion. Calm earth hangs into beaches of cake yellow sand and rivers dyed red from vain and poisonous insects.  
  
Quick enough not to need force he impales the girl's hands together with her own hairpin. Sweet eyes explode with shock and instantly began to water, once inviting lips tremble as if the cool breeze about them were freezing. The man in black looks down and inhales her horrid confusion like a fine and luxurious smoke.  
  
She sinks to her knees, sweeping up leaves with her hair and shaking bloody hands to hurry past prayer and into begging. His satisfied sigh is how she should've done hers if she would've had the reason. But, knowing no better than to bleed and whimper a little more, he grows uninspired, bored, disappointed, revolted; all so quickly and thoroughly that he frowns at the impulsiveness of it. The girl in green is a memory with only a turn of the man in black's coattail. Every tree bends elaborately rather than mundanely uprooting itself from his path.  
  
In an attempt to reassure himself he checks both sides of his hands, trying hard to breath without a sigh. Soon then, more effortlessly with his pockets full of fingers, he rides the glass elevator back into the sky, gazing about with mild interest. With a shrug lazy wrist flick the colors of the forest change like catalog pages.  
  
---  
  
Seita's eyes sprang open as an energy dagger pierced the pillow behind his head. A small cloud of feathers glided down around him while he cock- crowed a small gasp into the silence. Gradually, he tilted back and stared at the glowing blade jutting out of his forehead. His eyes followed the weapon up and across to a face clearly exhausted and pulsing with terrified vengeance. The couch stayed silent as he rose through the weapon and sat with hands pressed to his knees. Ryoko kept the pillow impaled and ignored the stuffing plumes in her hair. Hard breaths stung her teeth.  
  
"Well Ryoko--that actually ^was^ a good try," he complimented with a surprised but still uninterested voice. "As a matter of fact; in your position I probably would have tried the same thing."  
  
For long enough to bring down the last feather they both remained as silent as the pre-dawn world.  
  
"I...I w-w-will..k-^kill you^." Ryoko's dagger disappeared with a weak mutter of a rage whisper. She clutched at the wounded pillow, launching another small feather into the air.  
  
"No little pirate, I doubt you will."  
  
The sigh before the reply and both are too quiet amid his steps toward the back door. A few couch springs relaxed as Ryoko gave up, the sound stopped him like an embarrassingly rusty hinge and gruffly twisted his face downward.  
  
"However-"  
  
The would-be assassin raised her embargo in reflex to the target's curious compassion. She could only see his profile, but even half of his violent expression made her tense, but all her memory hoped against being drawn into another fight.  
  
"It's just as well that you try." The same strangely depressed voice contradicted his almost raging face.  
  
"W-w-what?"  
  
"I don't sleep particularly well, anyway."  
  
Ryoko watched him in pained confusion as he walked out towards the sunrise. She remembered collapsing into an unconscious heap after everyone had left her by the tree, but she couldn't remember how she was able to wake up in the living room recliner under a soft afghan. Instinct told her then as it told her now that Seita returned, carried her back to the house, made her comfortable, and went to sleep across from her on the couch. The very idea of his touch, particularly in that context, twisted her stomach and she clutched at it, ready to disembowel herself to remove his hands. Humiliation spreads a heavy slime around the back of her throat, stripping emotion and begging sake.  
  
***  
  
Just how the late afternoon can take over the morning early, some quiet discomfort turns into a little laziness, then people are calling every clock an impatient cheat. Tenchi and his father both had a habit of blindly dashing about from chore to chore when this happened, trying to make up for losing so much 'plenty of time', and cursing the curse of lethargy that hid under their breaths. Between repairs and readjustments neither had time to actually make anything new or be present when Sasami Jurai used her share of the plenty for a new species of flower.  
  
Hollow but contented hums filled the silence between the crumple and crease of colored tissue paper. She had promised Grandfather Misaki that she'd make him something to brighten up the office shrine and had covered the living room table with tiny pastel squares. Her humming hit a bright satisfied note, almost a squeak as she finished another pink paper flower and planted it into a vase modest enough for the shrine. She smiled up at Katshuhito, faintly showing off that she had completed nine already while he was still working on his first. For his part, he remained focused and calm, showing as much dignity as an old man making a paper flower could.  
  
During the fluffing up stage of her next addition, Yosho finally deposited his piece of décor as if it were a finely crafted sword being presented to an emperor. The noticeably more complex twist of petals stuck out from its companions exactly like a blue flower amidst a group of pink. An expression of slight disapproval darkened Sasami's face.  
  
"Those colors don't really match you know."  
  
Katshuhito looked up from his next flower, barely at its stem, and smiled wryly at her near-rudeness. She had tried to convince him to let her do it all but likely, he thought, to get the control as well as the credit.  
  
The screen door slid open slowly and Seita entered, stepping out of his shoes and melting a dirty pair of jeans and white T-shirt into a black and red-trimmed silk Kimono. His hair tied itself back in a neat and almost feminine bun. After a few pantomime gestures the work clothes appeared neatly folded and held like a waiter's tray. Yosho's raised eyebrow almost asked if such a display could replace the need for a bath, but he returned his attention to Sasami as the guest entered the living room with a curious smile.  
  
"Remember the words of a wise man Sasami," he began in his moderately sage-like voice, "that no flower can be truly beautiful without diversity."  
  
Sasami eyed the display thoughtfully this time then looked up at Seita just as he was making himself comfortable and adjacent to them both on the couch.  
  
"What do you think, Mr. Seita?" she asked earnestly, though she returned her attention to the next flower as soon as he settled himself.  
  
Rather than look at her growing bouquet Seita cast a side-glance and a clever grin at the priest who let his glasses catch the light. He raised two fingers above the table gently like a medieval portrait of a saint. Each loose piece of tissue began collecting beneath it immediately. The ruffling sound was missing but a flower slightly larger than Yosho's began to build itself into a violet rose complete with tiny twists of brown for thorns. Sasami stared at it with starry eyes, leaning forward to see the tissue paper bumblebee come flying out.  
  
"Diversity," Seita began in a soft and knowing voice, "is as inevitable as egos are necessary."  
  
He checked and smiled at their collective attention before looking back down at the table. All the different shades of green began scuttling towards him with the jerky charm of a child's stop-motion film. They began to crinkle themselves into a rather unpleasant looking weed as he revealed the inevitable other cent of wisdom.  
  
"It is AD-versity not DIE-versity that deserves recognition; the struggles between brothers and lovers and so on and so off are what make beauty possible." Sasami's eyes grew sad as little paper petals glided down onto the table.  
  
"It is the conflict, not the coexistence, that maintains the universe itself. If real flowers were as immune to weeds as these paper ones are, why, they wouldn't have needed to be half so pretty, would they Sasami?"  
  
Yosho tore his concerned eye away from his somewhat distraught youngest sister and to catch Aeka's as she almost managed to enter the room unnoticed then almost managed to hide the foul taste of whatever emotion she was swallowing.  
  
"^Sasami^! Um, Sasami?" The princess quickly replaced her anxious tone with an excessively softer one.  
  
"Yeah?" Sasami made no move to hide the solemn affect of today's mixed decorating lesson.  
  
"Could you please help me in the kitchen with something?"  
  
Sasami rose and went to her sister's side lifelessly, Seita stood up and looked into Aeka's eyes with even less emotion. Yosho's glasses, catching a different glare of light, hid his attention. A quick, almost startled breath caught some extra thus excessive politeness in the First Princess's throat.  
  
"Seita, here let me take your laundry so that you and Grandfather may continue, the display is quite lovely." She marched over and took the bundle from his hands, never moving her eyes up from his chest.  
  
"But Aeka-" Sasami began to protest with a little more energy.  
  
"This won't take long Sasami." The two began walking curtly towards kitchen before Aeka gracelessly altered their course to the laundry room.  
  
Sitting back down in Sasami's place, Seita eyed his little garden with amused disappointment. Katshuhito quietly inserted another blue flower into the vase and looked at him over his glasses, collecting new leaves and petals as he spoke in with teasing curiosity.  
  
"And what wise old man said all that?"  
  
The competing philosopher reclined slightly, and looked up only briefly enough to acknowledge that he'd been spoken to. Petals frozen in air mid- illusion unwound and slid back to their piles on cue from an auction bid from the slender man in the front row with the makeup.  
  
"Hm, I'm afraid I can't remember."  
  
The two men sat unspeaking amid kitchen sounds. Following the same unknown cue, they withdrew their selected books and read for long enough to become comfortable with the arrangement. Neither looked up till at last a yawn broke Katshuhito's peace.  
  
"I believe I still have some things to tend to at the shrine." He placed his book down dutifully and picked up the nearly filled vase as he stood.  
  
"There are times when I would prefer to simply relax with a book all day," light exasperation fringed the nostalgia in his voice, "but," he accepted with a sigh, "we all choose our commitments."  
  
Katshuhito looked down for a moment, seeming to expect a reply. When none came he tipped his head politely and began his walk back to the shrine alone.  
  
"Indeed we do," potential for rudeness was softly averted in the last second before the screen door closed, yet the priest missed a miniscule grin and a lingering whisper behind the pages of Seita's book:  
  
"...^grandfather^."  
  
***  
  
Nobuyuki stretched his arms out into the morning luxuriously this time, arching his back and stretching a rejuvenated smile to the limits. He lumbered forth from his lair with the jolliness of a bear waking to spring with some fat to spare. The first morning without an alarm clock in weeks brought on by a masterfully if hurriedly completed list of chores; he was still so drunk with sleep that he barely bothered to open his eyes fully, grasping about lazily for the bathroom door handle.  
  
"Excuse me, Mr. Misaki!" Sasami called out cheerfully as she dashed past him into the facilities with Ryo-ohki fast on her heals, bumping into the door on the first try and phasing through it on the second. The man of the house chuckled and shook his head at the floor then began shuffling rather than walking down the stairs, further savoring every glance he didn't have to make towards any clock. A naughty thought crossed his mind.  
  
"No-no-no, I couldn't do that." He mumbled to himself, rubbing more sleep from his eyes.  
  
Going back to bed, he reasoned, just wouldn't do. It might have been a week since he'd had a night of sleep uninhibited by work or worries of WWIII erupting in his back yard, but he couldn't just get out of bed, walk down the hall, and return like a groundhog. With a few more scratches and a stretch or two, he entered the dinning area with his eyes still closed, hopping to smell one of Sasami's famous breakfasts. All he smelled was the floral air freshener. He looked around, surprised first to see the kitchen empty and secondly to see Tenchi and Aeka eating not breakfast, but lunch. His son regarded him with a slightly amused smile.  
  
"Afternoon dad, did you sleep well?"  
  
Nobuyuki blinked rapidly, looked at the state of the sun outside and slapped his forehead.  
  
"Oh no, how long was I asleep?" He groaned, easing himself into the seat at the head-end of the table. Tenchi, took another bite of his sandwich and looked at his watch, answering after at least swallowing halfway.  
  
"It's about two in the afternoon now."  
  
An exaggerated moan of defeat drug Nobuyuki's head into his forearms. He turned from side to side in futile denial.  
  
"Don't worry dad, I asked Sasami to let you sleep in. You looked like you needed it."  
  
"You don't sound so energetic yourself, kid."  
  
Tenchi hadn't noticed his own monotone, but Nobuyuki had been raising a teenager long enough to tell the difference between boredom and weariness. Still, he had to keep the front.  
  
"Huh? What do you mean? I feel fine."  
  
"You sure about that?" His father pressed with a teasing glance.  
  
"Of course." Tenchi took his plate to the sink, hiding a twinge of annoyance.  
  
Nobuyuki watched him for a moment and shrugged. He took another look around and narrowed his brow a little.  
  
"Say, where is everybody?"  
  
Tenchi walked over to the screen door with his hands in his pockets. He answered the question in an interruption.  
  
"Well, grandpa must have some food stored up at the shrine because I haven't seen him since practice yesterday. Mihoshi took Seita on patrol with her again and-"  
  
"Washu's still in her lab." Nobuyuki added, looking at the closet with a measure of concern.  
  
"Of course." Tenchi's own worry manifested in a sarcastic sigh.  
  
"What about Ryoko?"  
  
There was a pause, Aeka silently took her plate to the sink.  
  
"She's been making herself scarce lately. She stays long enough to eat, but then she disappears again."  
  
Nobuyuki scratched his head that his son was speaking like a disappointed father. The tone unnerved him and resolved him to lift it with some humor.  
  
"Ah, I see, a lovers quarrel."  
  
"Dad." Tenchi slumped his face into his hand with a groan. "Do you ever give it a rest?"  
  
Aeka gave the table Nobuyuki's share of her evil eye.  
  
"Come on son, don't let her get you down. She'll come crawling back. Besides, where else does she have to go?" His lighthearted encouragement was met with a pained steel that disappeared as soon as it came. Ignoring it, he straightening up and out in his chair.  
  
"I need to go run some shopping errands today anyway. I'll buy some flowers...^and^ some more sake." He chuckled while Tenchi massaged each of his eyes with a finger.  
  
"Cut it out, dad." The usual whine was gone.  
  
"Hey, would you two like to come with me. I've got a lot to do and I could use some extra hands."  
  
"No thank you dad, I've got---things to do." Tenchi slid out and started walking towards the front door.  
  
"How bout you, Lady Aeka."  
  
"Oh, um, thank you for offering Mr. Misaki," Aeka answered softly, after being startled from her cloudy trance, "I'm afraid I also have some items that require my attention."  
  
Honorable father's breath slouched him.  
  
"I'll go with you, Mr. Misaki!" Sasami's voice sang out as she ran down the stairs. Ryo-ohki echoed her in kind.  
  
"Oh good!" Nobuyuki perked up instantly.  
  
"Sasami, I don't think-"  
  
"Aeka, would you stop it, please?"  
  
Everyone was a little taken aback by the outburst of annoyed maturity in her voice.  
  
"I'm not a baby anymore. You can't worry yourself to death every time I try step out from under your kimono."  
  
Aeka prepared the proper cross between a command and a plea. But when she noticed everyone looking at her she bit down hard enough to swallow 'overly protective'. Most of her still screamed in agony as she submitted to the floor with a lifeless voice.  
  
"Very well, Sasami."  
  
The hug came faster than Aeka thought her sister could move, and she almost chocked with surprise.  
  
"Thanks sis! Tell me when you're ready to go Mr. Misaki, I hope I can find what to wear by then." Sasami dashed off to the guest room in a burst of giggles, Ryo-ohki once again picking up the slack.  
  
"Hey Tenchi, where are you going anyway?" Nobuyuki called out just as his son was closing the front door behind him.  
  
"I, uh," He hesitated, itching to close the door all the way and searching for the final answer frantically. Aeka's eyes, watching him with a contagious sadness, returned his solemn attitude. The door closed, his head drooped with a weightless answer.  
  
"I just need some air."  
  
***  
  
Aeka crocheted in the living room alone, trying to remind herself with each stitch that the silence was peaceful. There was hardly a wind to stir the trees outside and she knew better than to listen to grandfather pendulum for the next bell. She reminded herself that this was an absence of noise rather than an absence of sound; she should be grateful for a lack of Cartoon shows from Mihoshi and a lack of snoring from Ryoko. The thought of her rival made her pause and raise her head for another look around. After regarding the closet door with a worry she instantly fought back, she stared back down at the insignificant rag of yarn. Solitude confirmed.  
  
*The house is spotless, but empty. I know well enough the difference between boredom and loneliness---I-I just wish I could be like that demon and escape into a nice bottle of sake.  
  
The liquor cabinet slowly crept into Aeka's vision but she shook her head down with a pang of guilt.  
  
*I suppose I can't really blame her, there's no point in denying what was going on that night, and if what he did to her was anything like what-  
  
Aeka's throat swelled shut in a tight knot. The memory she'd been struggling with for more than a week now managed an upper hand, replaying its essence with merciless attention to detail. The crochet crinkled in her hands. Teeth ground together so tightly that her lips peeled back, ready to catch a single tear wailing down the side of her face. Once fully relived, she fought again for the pin; opponent, coach, the whole team. Finally muffled and transparent, the memory gave her back her present. In a lingering moment of panic she eyed her needle and considered pricking a finger to see if any of her senses would waver or fade from the distraction. With shaky hands she lifted her idle distraction and set it to the side. Two deep breaths and one swallow later, she looked from the ceiling to the closet door with helpless anxiety.  
  
*I know what's happening. I know I can't simply try to live with this...person, but I get so frightened when I remember---that I can't even think straight. Ryoko and Washu have likely gone through something similar and they have ^both^ become just as withdrawn.  
  
Anger flashed across Aeka's face and she gripped her knees roughly.  
  
*This is unacceptable! A princess, the First Princess of Jurai, must not allow herself to become a prisoner in the home where she is a guest. If only I could tell Tenchi I-  
  
Terror rose up in her belly and she clutched at the pain through flashes of cruel blonde and young blood. Mid-panic, she tried to convince herself that everything would soon begin to improve, that after Ryoko he would be satisfied and eventually leave without harming Tenchi, or anyone else.  
  
*Mihoshi! He's alone with her now, what if he, what if she-  
  
Helpless panic was clawing at her again, royal reserves clawed back, whitening her knuckles as she dug into her thighs and released a fresh pair of tears. She was not so absorbed, however, to miss the distinct sound of Ryoko phasing through the roof and startled at the figure descending onto the couch next to her. In a reflexive movement she moved her crochet onto the coffee table without taking her nervous eyes away from her new commiserate.  
  
Ryoko settled down slowly with the overly cautious movements of someone trying to hide their intoxication, though she made no effort to acknowledge the miserable judge beside her. By comparison, Princess Perfecta's eyes did not look half as heavy with strained vessels.  
  
No one had said anything about the quantity of sake bottles about, but from the sickly hair shine and foul skin odor Aeka began to wish she had. By no small quantity of effort, she opened her mouth to offer some constructive criticism, but luckily all that came out was a timid greeting and a whisper of concern.  
  
"H-Hello, Ryoko. Where have you been?"  
  
Just when Aeka was beginning to sense the first layer added to a wall of silence between them, she received a distant sign of life.  
  
"Around."  
  
The demon's voice did not slur, in fact her intoxication could have easily passed for severe depression and perhaps, Aeka thought, vice versa. After gathering another mountain of courage, she pushed again to turn the cause of their mutual alienation into some sort of connection.  
  
"It's just us here. Sasami went shopping with Tenchi's father, Washu is still in her lab, Yosho is still at the shrine, Tenchi asked to go on a walk alone, and Mihoshi is---is with Seita." The update came with the same timid anxiety, but Aeka slowly made progress by dragging her eyes over to Ryoko's profile a little more with each word.  
  
Liquid sloshed loudly as Ryoko lifted her bottle, took a loveless gulp, and tilted her face, pressing it into the cold glass to hear the ocean in 'Captain Morgamoto's' sake.  
  
"I guess you already knew that." Aeka deduced softly, looking back down at her hands for another quiet moment.  
  
"Aeka, what are we going to do?"  
  
The fearful despair jerked the princess upright and flashed an anxious look across her face. With a weak and hesitant movement, Ryoko gradually turned her head to combine stares.  
  
There had been no real eye contact between them since Aeka's 'session', but in only a few moments the two rivals recognized a reflection of the crippling fear they carried. There was no further need for Ryoko to explain herself, yet Aeka's mouth still quivered, trying to ask a question, but only managing half an answer.  
  
"I---I don't know."  
  
Aeka swallowed and focused back to her lap. Ryoko closed her eyes and flattened more of her cheek against the sake bottle for a cold comfort.  
  
"But you know we have to do something. Who can guess what his big plan is, but he---he-"  
  
"Yes Ryoko, I saw it too." Pained though they were to remember the surreal detachment in Seita's eyes, they took a small comfort knowing that someone shared their experience.  
  
Soft and heavy, gold strained for some assertiveness while also struggling to re-suppress sensations of wasted energy and talking dolls.  
  
"Mihoshi, he'll have done something with her before the day's out." A bitter gulp stalled her voice for a few seconds. "Do you think she'll be okay?"  
  
"I don't know...do-do you think he'd---to Lord Tenchi, I mean?" Aeka stuttered back sobs to the clenched fists and growling face beside her.  
  
"Maybe, but I'm not gonna give him the chance." Ryoko clung desperately to the few liberating hints of rage she could find, begging them to lift her despair.  
  
The incredulous expression on Aeka's face eventually faded into forced seriousness, she gathered a little more of her kimono into her hands and tried to speak with some measure of strength.  
  
"What do you intend to do?"  
  
Cold comfort receded in the peel of a sake bottle down from Ryoko's face. She stared at it in her lap for more than a minute, gathering the clarity it would take in her alcoholic state to explain what had obviously been on her mind when she first asked Aeka essentially the same question. Though she could not hide her drunkenness, sincerity overshadowed even the fear in her voice.  
  
"I remembered something just as Mihoshi was leaving with him, something that happened the day after my date with Tenchi."  
  
Aeka tried not to show any reaction to the iodine splashed across her already raw emotions, and was glad that Ryoko remained too absorbed in her explanation to notice.  
  
"When I'm drunk his tricks don't work. So long as my brain is swimming in booze he can't make me see anything, and-and I can see him, I mean, I can see what he ^really^ looks like."  
  
She turned with a sickly smile that slightly enjoyed Aeka's wide eyes with a drunken chuckle.  
  
"Don't worry, he's not some hideous beast with six arms and two heads, but he's not nearly as impressive as he'd like us to think. I don't know ^what^ he is, really. All I do know is that so long as we're a little tipsy he won't be able to make us see anything more than a card trick, and that---and that might get us one step closer to catching him off guard."  
  
The previously suppressed slur began to resurface as Ryoko became more excited with her plan. Aeka withdrew slightly with a look of disbelief and slight disgust.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking; 'how the hell are we supposed to do anything if we're drunk'? We'll you know that people can still do ^some^ things when they're drunk, and we don't have to get totally pissed. I think that so long as there's some kind of cloud in our heads he won't be able to get through. Do you hear what I'm saying?" Ryoko placed the bottle on the coffee table, re-corked it, and leaned closer to Aeka with a pleading look in her eyes.  
  
"Please Aeka, we have to do ^something^, if we don't then-" Ryoko looked away and hung her head for the weight of plugged tears. She spread her hands into her hair with mounting stress while her unlikely ally looked on.  
  
When it seemed the sake captain would be running aground at any moment, Aeka shook her mixture of repulsion and fear, stirred it, and poured it down the drain to pick up the bottle in a hesitant movement. She brought it close to her face and removed the cork with no attempt at ladylike grace. The aroma filled her with a pleasant warmth, but she remained solemn. Never looking up from the exaggerated label for fear of what her rival's expression might say, she tilted the neck at Ryoko to grudgingly offer a deadpan acceptance.  
  
"Cheers."  
  
***  
  
Spaceships offer the kind of quiet isolation that most people can only imagine with smiles or shudders. The scientific horrors of the surrounding vacuum, the loss of sound, the absence of gravity, and the merciless temperatures; they all become secondary in the face of purest black. Surely nothing short of a morbid desire for discovery, or escape, could compel a person into it. Thus, within the confines of a spacecraft, a single line can be drawn between angels who could not sleep without a small comfort-light, and imps who would hide themselves in the darkest places, indulging in search party fantasies, or ways to begin anew as the monster in the shadows. Irony through and through: the final frontier was all this time the first.  
  
---  
  
Mihoshi thought Seita was cute. It had taken her a while to admit this to herself, working through formal indifference, fear of shallow first impressions, and passive states of 'not ^UN^-attractive'. After repeating this opinion to herself enough times, she gradually took comfort in one of the few concepts best left subjective. A languid combination of yawns and stretched limbs filled the captain's seat as she leaned back, hopping to find the unlisted passenger looking at her when she opened her eyes again, but he remained focused on the passing stars.  
  
*Just like last time, I get him alone on my ship and all he wants to do is look out the window. Hel-lo-oh, there's more scenery to enjoy over here!  
  
Mihoshi pouted to his back for a moment, slouching forward till her frustration wilted into hopelessness.  
  
*Besides, I thought you could look at any part of the universe whenever you wanted. After the first trip was only ^half^ a disaster I thought you might want to see more of me...  
  
Hygiene practices and metaphysical abilities flashed red across her cheeks in an unnerving combination of mental imagery. But for the first time in a while potential humiliation was beginning to be exciting, and this only made her more embarrassed. She tried to look busy at the controls, but kept him in the corner of her eye.  
  
*What am I going to do? We're already friends, I guess, but I'm getting worse every time I see him. He seems perfectly happy just reading or watching the lake sometimes, but he's still always polite...and charming.  
  
A youthful smile wormed its way into her self-pity.  
  
*I don't know why Aeka and Ryoko have been so shy around him lately, sure the guy's made a couple of jokes, and that 'dimension' is kinda unnerving, but I bet he's lonelier than he lets on. Well darn it, I already gave up on Tenchi. Life's too short to always be so shy, let's see if I have any sort of chance of---of.  
  
Mihoshi lowered her head and tried to look at something near him, in case he caught her stare this time. Still flustered, she exhaled and searched out her own window, hopping to maybe first share ^then^ catch his interest.  
  
*No more delays! It's time to question the suspect detective Mihoshi!  
  
A quarter of her lightheaded giggle escaped before she could catch it, thankful that Seita hadn't noticed. She smiled almost deviously and turned her chair to face him.  
  
"So, uh, here we are again." Mihoshi managed with nervous and barely hidden expectation.  
  
The silent posture rotated his chair, unaffected by the coquettish posture of his captain as she pressed the side of her face into the headrest and looked directly into his eyes. He replied in soft textures, either unaware of how it would feed her allure, or trying to compete with it.  
  
"Here we were before."  
  
Tan cheeks tightened pink to nip a giggle in the bud.  
  
"It's probably gonna be another boring patrol."  
  
"Hm, boredom is worse a sin than most people know."  
  
Mihoshi's blush faded a little with her confusion as he turned back toward the window, but rather than struggle to analyze his riddle, she asked him another. Almost bursting with embarrassment for some unexplainable boldness.  
  
"So why do you look so bored all the time?"  
  
Seita's half smile rotated back and made her melt as much as it ever had, but she was enjoying the excitement too much to go limp now.  
  
"Do I?" He answered slyly.  
  
"Well," she hesitated slyly, "it's kinda strange that you can do so much that most people can only dream of, but most of the time it seems like you're just in your retirement, just reading and---watching the sun set."  
  
*He HAD to have caught that! And if he didn't, he's sure to do something with this-  
  
"And you don't ^look^ like an old man."  
  
Smile dropping dead then rising like a phoenix, Seita lowered his head and shook it with a silent chuckle.  
  
*Yes! Yes! He's finally going to blush! Mr. Pretty Boy Ghost is going to act like a person for a change.  
  
The sparkle in Mihoshi's eyes snuffed out when Seita raised his own with an icy, almost challenging depth. Reflected blues in different hues offered an invitation she could not refuse. As smooth and clever as his voice became Mihoshi focused on the softness it maintained.  
  
"Most of the times I've tried to be more---'entertaining', well, the princess wasn't too happy, and Tenchi's father has been watching what he says around me ever since."  
  
It took a moment for the giggle to come, but there was no stopping the memory of Nobuyuki's truly inspired disgust. Seita chuckled silently with her, but broke eye contact again. She continued long after he was done, not noticing how he stared at the floor with an increasingly serious expression. By the time she calmed herself his brow had wedged together.  
  
"That was ^really^ funny." Mihoshi exhaled, nearly wiping away a tear.  
  
"Apparently." His voice turned cold and pivoted his feet toward the window again.  
  
*You're loosing him detective, got to think fast. Catch him off guard again.  
  
Mihoshi tried to hide the effort needed to bring the latest conversation piece to life. She forced her blush to fuel her smile and leaned forward a little, trying her best at a seductive voice.  
  
"So...^did^ you ever take a peak?"  
  
The passenger stopped breathing for a moment, and remained stone silent. Unable to see his face, Mihoshi imagined her own blush spreading to him and inviting her progressive lean.  
  
"Do ^I^ look like an old man?"  
  
Her own boldness and wit cheered her on, readied her for Seita's slowly rising face, closed her eyes, and pushed her lips forward to where she hoped his would be. She had to steady herself in her chair slightly, but she kept the kiss going. For a few seconds their intimacy was complete with all that fantasy could offer. Each position she shifted her mouth into brought her greater pleasure, till at last she realized that his lips had remained completely lifeless. Not wanting to deny the moment, she leaned back slightly and advanced again with every intension of making this kiss as deep as possible.  
  
She puckered up to darkness, tilting forward more, and more. For some reason the chair's fabric brushing the end of her nose felt like the most bitter and empty experience she could imagine. A moment's time carried the same emotion through to each of her senses, and Mihoshi knew the essence of a loathing that would consume and discard the universe. In the seconds before she recoiled in terror, she saw white.  
  
Gasping and clutching her arms, Mihoshi flung back into the chair with eyes opened too wide to see. By the force of confusion came sight through a look of disbelief as the two blue eyes met again. The repulsion and malice clenched in his expression petrified her, though they demanded that she flee in terror. Rusted metal pipes groaned distantly in the back of her throat as Seita's thin fingers shot forward and clawed into the headrest to pin a few strands of hair. Now, his own confidence urged him forward, nearly touching his nose to hers as he spoke through the spiteful vapors of his subhuman hiss.  
  
"How Tenchi's guests do love to ^flatter themselves^!"  
  
It was finally enough to reach her enforced instincts. Mihoshi twisted in her chair, feeling the miniscule scratch of a fingernail on her ear as she sent the headrest into his wrist. She dove away and rolled while drawing her blaster, she faced him again with a rigid defensive posture, aiming at his chest. Despite the focused precision of her move, her face could not hide features torn between a sob and a scream.  
  
Seita took a step towards her, crossing his arms in annoyance and looking down at the weapon like a bad joke.  
  
"S-S-Stay back!" Mihoshi cried, no less distraught when he shook his head at her feet and sighed redundant exasperation.  
  
"It would not do to have you shooting holes in your ship, you know."  
  
Boredom took enough of the depravity from his voice for Mihoshi to think coherently. The next instinct mirrored the first and she began to back away. An oblivion portal swelled between them, vanished, and reappeared behind her in the next second. She turned around in time to see Seita emerge from it and feel her whole body clench as it closed behind him. The physical uneasiness subsided, but for the first time the mental chill from his window still lingered. Like dizziness wound into a ball tighter than horror, it was a bullet nestled between her throat and skull that gained crippling heat under his cruel glare.  
  
"Wha-what are-" Between her mouth and her gun, Mihoshi's quivering finally attracted him with helpless frailty. He continued towards her, walking in slow rhythm with his words, humoring himself with his own smugness.  
  
"I must commend you on some rather lucky detective work; you're the first to catch a glimpse of my nature before I could release a glamour for it."  
  
Though clenched and narrowed, his eyes stretched like rubber, neon into sky blue as smooth features carved into ivory gloss. Striking, stabbing handsome.  
  
"Fortune smiles on both of us; rather than spoil or distract it, this unexpected little display should only increase the potency of our session."  
  
Mouthing the words to another half-formed question, she heard her passenger suck saliva around his tongue. It sounded closer than her own teeth.  
  
"I really doubt it would be worth my time to try to explain my work to you Mihoshi, but rest assured, you and all the others will be among the first to read the final report---if it's ever published."  
  
To her surprise his voice changed back to the charming croon it had been moments before burring her beneath this surreal and obscurely motivated intimidation.  
  
"Please stop cornering yourself, detective. Driving strong women to trap themselves can only offer so much. And I've already gotten closer to you than I ^ever^ intended." A spark of malice gleamed for a moment, sparking Mihoshi's shock enough for her to process the content behind his delivery.  
  
"What are you talking about!?" She blurted out with eyes clenched and weapon pointed inadvertently upwards.  
  
"Really Mihoshi," he clicked his tongue effeminately, "are you so lax an investigator? Do you honestly think it's a coincidence that Professor Washu confined herself to her lab shortly after examining me? Do you really believe that Aeka and Ryoko shy away from me now for the sake of your ^misplaced attraction^?"  
  
The bitterness sparked in his words again, anger lining his face like the foreboding first steps of a monstrous transformation.  
  
"What-what did you-" Lips sagged and eyes widened amid her fading voice.  
  
"The same thing I've been doing for ^eons^! I told you already: I won't tell you today!"  
  
A fast breath pulled his smile to the side.  
  
"Now kindly shut your ^silly mouth^ so that we can get this session under way."  
  
His hiss returned full force, a goblin's toothy smirk crawled up his face, wicked glee sparkled at the ends of his eyes in revelry at such quick rhyming. The dark silver dress shirt darkened into iron across his torso. Already pulled back hair tightened and whitened, stretching the remaining color from his face. At last the fear began to weaken Mihoshi's guise of resistance, the blaster slowly weighed down her hands. He seemed to see this as an encouraging sight to accompany her lack of response.  
  
"Thank you. Now, exactly what did you think you were doing trying to seduce ^me^? Did I really strike you as someone waiting to 'get a date'?" He interrogated with arms crossed and face angled in a superior stance, going so far as to clutch the air over his chest for emphasis. Mihoshi began to shake the early shock in her head, unclear if she did so to express ignorance or make one last attempt to deny how he was speaking to her.  
  
"I took the liberty of looking through one of those photo albums you try to keep hidden, and I was a little surprised to see just how many failed romances you've accumulated. Someone with your proportions should have no problem attracting potential mates.  
  
Two binder wings grew out of his forearm and flapped open with plumes of photos, Seita flipped through them idly.  
  
"I wonder what all the other girls who've coveted your appearance would say to see your list of squandered opportunities. Indeed, some of them were almost as handsome as me."  
  
Smile unsheathed again in a mocking show of teeth, the increased horror on Mihoshi's face must have hurt his cheeks.  
  
"Oh, but maybe it wasn't your fault. Maybe they just weren't ^worthy^ of you." He closed the folder invisible and put his hands up sarcastically.  
  
"Were they 'harsh'?" A step forward and turned Seita into the photographed memory of her third boyfriend. His jaw strained and tensed, momentarily turning to flesh-colored stone.  
  
"Were they 'cold'?" A cloud of breath hissed out over lover number four's teeth as they parted like icicles. Mihoshi finally managed to close her eyes and turn away with a gasp.  
  
"What are you afraid of ^now^ Mihoshi? That I'll leave you feeling just as empty as they did, that your hopeful--fairy--tails will always turn out to be lying--demon--tongues?" Moving closer again, Seita reverted fully to his subhuman hiss. Both of them clenched their teeth.  
  
"Or is it something worse? Are you afraid I'll try to 'take' all that they ever wanted? You look like such a victim huddling into yourself like that, it almost makes me consider-" He paused his approach and rubbed his chin in contemplation, blatantly adding more villainous bravado to their session.  
  
Mihoshi could not help but drag her eyes out of hiding and repeated a prayer to herself that she would not see every woman's nightmare swirling in blue venom. She watched as he moved his hands behind his back and took a long step forward, coming close enough to pull her into an embrace. She watched as he lowered his head like a bird of prey. She watched the corner of his mouth rise in a sneer to express the unmistakable darkness of resentful lust. A cruel calm in his voice savored his drawn-out description.  
  
"It almost makes me consider it---that strange expression of desire---with the uncanny ability---to make the recipient feel ugly."  
  
Mihoshi clenched her eyes shut again and whimpered helplessly. As she hugged her blaster like a useless teddy bear, two reactions to the imminent violence passed through her mind: to offer one last plea, and to use her now obsolete weapon for one truly final defense. Silence endured, she could barely hear him breathing. In microscopic movements she began to open her eyes while positioning the blaster beneath her chin. A voice stopped her, the voice she had heard Tenchi's sixth guest speak with when he first arrived. Yet, the suppressed self-pity was now laced with the vibration of discarded humanity. She might never have thought it possible to simultaneously feel so much hatred and so much pity for any single creature.  
  
"Taking action rarely fills me with the kind of transcendent power that I absorb when I encourage, when I ^inspire^ action in others. In all my experience with the act you fear from me now, I have found something that I'd like you to consider among any other ideas you take from our session here.  
  
"A person might think that encouraging such a thing would be a standard calling for me, surely the formation of a sexual predator would adequately support the kind of energy you believe I represent. When it does occur, the only justice to be considered is whether or not the offender is punished. As much as wills can be twisted from either outcome, there is a crime that can, indirectly, have a significantly larger impact.  
  
"When someone is falsely accused of this act, there is an ^inevitable negative outcome^: either an innocent-accused will be turned into a monster, or a future innocent-accuser will have cause to be thought a liar. The idea of this crime alone is enough to chill the mind, but the greatest power, and the strongest pull towards the of heart of oblivion, is the painfully resistant doubt that people must, nonetheless, apply to any and all who would accuse someone of it."  
  
There was no place left in Mihoshi's mind to hide, every potential sanctuary was overflowing with the polar flux of the fear and curiosity Seita had inspired. For some reason she believed that he was not going to even touch her again, that he was fulfilling all his cruel desires simply by speaking to her this way. Once more curiosity won out and forced her to look at her would be attacker for more answers.  
  
His head was bowed toward the meditative wedge shape she'd seen him make with his hands a number of times before. She stood slightly more erect and lowered her blaster till it hung limply at her side. Her hand tightened on it again as his head rose slow and ritualistic to gaze upon something beyond the ship's nose. Mihoshi's brow tilted in momentary confusion till she turned around and propelled it upward in terror. Yukinojo was flying directly into the center of a gigantic oblivion portal. Every aspect of time and space shut out behind them, every one of her senses clenched like a fish thrown into coarse burning sand. She could not have screamed enough, so she almost welcomed the black out.  
  
The circuitry above the cockpit came blurred then bright then blessedly mundane. Mihoshi could not understand why her breathing was not labored after such trauma, but the unsettling fact of the matter was that the only discomfort she felt was that of the hard metal beneath her head. She reached up to the armrest of the captain's chair and pulled herself to her feet. A groan emerged to dull the memory of the hell she'd passed through in less than a few blinks. Simpler recall pulled her back; she reached down instinctively for where she might have dropped her blaster, but it was gone. Though she knew he would be standing there when she raised her eyes again, the sight of Seita in the same cold, contemplative posture made her whole body tense.  
  
"I put it away in your quarters, I didn't think it would do for you to have any needless accidents after all we've been through." He stated plainly, his once charming voice now eternally sinister. The detective's mouth shook again for the right question.  
  
"Our time here is up Mihoshi, but I've prescribed some time 'away from things'. It is likely that, before you can truly experience the warmth of returned affection, you need to experience isolation in greater depths." His smugness half-smiled more reflexive than affected, but the hard glare and bitter voice that followed were terribly convincing.  
  
"Think of me as you will---as you must, and from this day forward: view every pretty face that crosses your path," his pit widened white behind him, "with ^doubt^."  
  
Seita stepped back and out with a rush of oblivion air, slightly less interesting now for Mihoshi's new understanding. Her assignment to the floor was slow and silent in coming. Head tipped against the back of it, the chair swiveled idly with each rocking to pump streams down her face.  
  
"Mihoshi, what's wrong, and who have you been talking to, my sensors have not registered any other passengers." The ship offered its programmed compassion.  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
A pause drank her whimper and chewed computing beeps with her heavy breaths.  
  
"Our current position is unknown, Mihoshi. We are out of range of any G.P. communication."  
  
***  
  
Tenchi kept his face downcast on the familiar path, watching his sweep over the sponge paint of warm light that made it through the trees. Dust rose from the path behind him, fogging the path for escaped dandelion seeds. So buried in pockets, his hands held scenery down to simple green and wind down to thin air. Love songs, the birds and the crickets, soaked and drowned to carbon bubbles under a tyrant rant of thought.  
  
*What's going on? Ryoko and Aeka are acting like they're almost afraid of me, grandpa and Seita are even quieter than usual, and every second I worry that Washu will blow us all to atoms before she finally comes out of her lab. The only one's who seem okay are Sasami and Mihoshi.  
  
*And there's not a thing I can do about it, because I just can't think of what to say anymore. Everything in my life is starting to seem--- wrong. The littlest things are just setting me off, back and forth, angry or depressed. I've tried meditation, but all I ever get are the silly debates I'm in now. I want to talk about it so much, but I look at everyone here and instantly predict how the first few lines will go. Then I just can't do it, and I end up going back to acting like another normal student and it just gets worse.  
  
*I know that coming out here has helped before, but what if it doesn't this time? Who will be left if I can't even talk to her?  
  
The path ended at a large headstone, carved well enough that, even after another few decades of weather, the name would remain. Tenchi tried to take comfort in this rather than feel guilt that it had been almost so long since he'd last visited. Like one stone facing another, he stood for long enough to believe he couldn't think of anything to say, then long enough to say what he felt.  
  
"I miss you, mother." His voice began in whispers, but quickly filled with solemn monotone of trances and prayers. Wind and throat to chest pain answered, he listened intently.  
  
"I know I'm always going to miss you a little every day, but right now, these past couple weeks even-"  
  
First eyes, then the rest closed tightly, forcing Tenchi not to cry in the sole company of someone who'd seen more of his tears than any other.  
  
"I keep wishing you were here. I live in a house full of exotic gir-- -full of exotic people, but sometimes all I can think about," he stopped for a breath, "is how only ^you^ could make me feel better when something was wrong."  
  
One gulp, then another, helped him along.  
  
"Course, now I don't even know what's really wrong in the first place. I don't know why Aeka and Ryoko are avoiding me and almost everyone else. I don't know why I give up ^really^ ^talking^ to anyone before I even start, but I know it's something I'm doing wrong."  
  
Kneeled, head down before his mother's memory, Tenchi's tears spilled over when he closed the lids. A few sobs shook through him like a gust of freezing wind, his stomach howled and was silent with a cough and a thick sleeve under his nose.  
  
"Sorry," he sniffed weakly, "It's probably not very fair to expect you to how to deal with all this." A small chuckle broke through but only made it more obvious that he'd been crying. "Actually, you might have even disapproved of having so many girls and some ghostly stranger staying in your house."  
  
The moment of relief faded back into wind, and Tenchi tried to listen for a gentle encouraging voice...or a whisper, or an echo of it, anything to drain the hopeless swell of this blister.  
  
"Mother, Grandpa always tells me that you're watching over me, and I want to believe that," his voice wavered again, "I want to believe it so badly." Another hearty sob chocked back. "But something is wrong with my life now, and I don't know what it is. Please mother, please tell me how to make things happy again."  
  
The wind around him seemed to pull away, slowly inhaled by mountain giants. Tenchi tightened his hands, waiting for the exertion to warrant some reply from the next world, pleading till he neared that first and greatest grief he'd felt so many years ago. A child again, crying out for his mother to comfort him, but he was too consumed with the pain of loss to feel the inevitable shame. Through more sobbing grabs for the few comforting moments left in his memory, this call for the mercy of his mother's spirit was so loud that he almost didn't hear it when it came.  
  
"Please do not cry, Tenchi."  
  
Achika's request wavered with sad sympathy, but with more life than she'd had weeks before passing. Her son, despite self-assurance that he deserved this contact, could feel his heart stop beating for a few seconds before it started again strong enough to pump salve. Not from inside his head and not from around the wind; he'd heard his mother's voice in front of him, but was no less terrified to jerk his head up to a semi-transparent image of her. Luckily, for manners' sake, the instinct to run screaming was overcome by petrified awe.  
  
"M-Mother?" A fair imitation of what spirits were supposed to sound like glided over Tenchi's lips.  
  
"Don't be afraid." The same soft tone reassured and locked their eyes, gentle mirrors sinking into astonished lakes.  
  
Tenchi could peer through enough of his mother to read her name as she sat very ladylike upon her gravestone. But even if there'd been a little ring over her head he still would have seen her more clearly than any memory could recreate. Hair and skin, perfect down to the pore along every unmistakable line of her face. One smile did the work of a hundred hands in pulling him to shaky knees by the base of his heart. He took a step forward with hands slightly outstretched, the joy of seeing her again already overshadowed by the most basic of instincts. At that moment he would have given his life to be able to run crying into safe mother's arms one last time. Though completely muted, he hoped that she would be able to tell, as she always had, when her son needed her love.  
  
Another tentative crush of leaves, another step closer, Tenchi's hands quivered but hardly rose above his waistline. Even by so close a smile, it was still transparent and eventually brought back the helpless agony of watching her lie sick in bed. He clenched under the weight of more grief than he'd endured before his wish had been granted. But, feeling like child again after so long, he nonetheless forgot about seeming ungrateful. Luckily a young man's hands can hold and offer out more questioning emotions, a young man's voice can deepen them just above a whine.  
  
"^Why^?"  
  
Pray strength, beg forgiveness, Achika did it all in the freshly pressed temple of her dainty hands. She could speak passively enough to make her tears hide in shame.  
  
"Oh, my Tenchi-chan, my darling son. I never wanted to leave you. You must know that."  
  
Unable to even attempt a guise of maturity, Tenchi hugged her answer to himself and lowered his head with a sob. It took minutes of this to remember that he could still speak to her, and he willed himself to be as happy as he'd thought he'd be when still praying for a voice. The strongest of smiles trembled for the burden.  
  
"Mother, I-"  
  
"Shhhhhh, hush now my baby boy, my perfect little angel." Her voice was light, bright enough to replace the sun, and thin enough to waft in between every cell in his body.  
  
Holding to the lapels of her kimono, Achika sat up from the stone, at last becoming slightly more opaque. Tenchi chuckled tears that he should even notice the disorientation of having her a little shorter than him for the first time. She tilted her head and tingled his nerves with eyes that could replace Tsunami's matriarchy. Down to the tips on each lose strand of hair, up through the diamond dust at the corner of each eye, her son watched as she tilted her head to gentle fingers pulling back the cloth over her left breast.  
  
"Come to me, my Tenchi-chan. Mama's here.  
  
The tip pushed up a bit of her white silk undershirt, ghostly as it still was, Tenchi could see it clearly. His heart let him know that it was stopping and starting up again, beating backwards this time; the gears of the first clock howl, twisted counter by unnamable hands, the first songbird cheats death with an imploded beak, must forever screech for a mate.  
  
Achika stepped forward, pulling her kimono open a little wider. One of her son's hands, no longer frozen in reverence, peeled up in revulsion.  
  
"Everything can be perfect and safe again. Be helpless, and happy to take of my life."  
  
She looked up at Tenchi the way she wanted to watch over him, delirious with a mother's purpose. He fell hard onto his rear, scuttling back like an orphaned cub, still trapped shocking between his mother's chest and overwhelmed eyes.  
  
"Mother, what are you-"  
  
"Return to peace, my baby, drink innocence again. It is sweet," mother cupped the bottom and managed a caressing squeeze, "and ^pure^."  
  
The advertisement's clincher drifted and echoed like sea mist, milk began to ooze, darkening Achika's clothing with a bleeding violet marker. Grape candy, the emperor's dye, it streamed freely down her body, dripping onto her feminine feet as she took another step over her paling son's incoherent gasps.  
  
"Mother knows best, Tenchi-chan."  
  
Her stern frown grabbed his jugular and set his frantic eyes searching down her body to the ground between them. Brighter violet milk was pooling towards him, swirling to mirrored mercury with an oil slick's rainbow aura. He wheezed something like 'no' as it continued between his legs to show a melting reflection of his terror.  
  
"Isn't this what you wanted?"  
  
"Wha---Wha-"  
  
"You don't want answers, you just want to curl up to mother again."  
  
Boring his eyes back into the apparition's, Tenchi clenched the ground at her cold disappointment, fingernails bending back a pain to match her voice.  
  
"I know this, I ^have^ been watching over you and everything else in our home, not as a guardian, but as a prisoner. Your father, your grandfather, and all of my friends have accepted my death, but you Tenchi, you continue to cling to me like a child younger than you were when I last saw you."  
  
Achika looked down at a toddler with intense disappointment then held both hands over her kimono to keep it shut, though it still bled. She wept for him to see.  
  
"You have not honored my memory, you have only honored your own sense of loss. Such a self-absorbed boy I raised, it's no wonder he can't see the problem with his extended family when it's right before his eyes."  
  
The following sigh was enough to drain a ghost's life, and reanimate the chaos in Tenchi's frozen innards.  
  
"You will never abandon your childishness, so I must take you on again as my baby, nurse my Tenchi-chan forever."  
  
His mother had only spoken crossly on a few occasions, and it had always upset him. Now he was crying as much as he ever had, all but sucking his thumb as defensive disbelief folded in the face of a mother's scorn.  
  
"^But Mother, how-^"  
  
"Follow me my little angel," her nursing voice cooed again as she turned and stepped away, "hopefully someone else will come to save your family."  
  
Achika's tough love paused with arms folded behind her back as Tenchi shook up to his knees and clutched the sobs in his head almost oblivious that the milk was disappearing into the ground.  
  
"Save them? Save them from what?"  
  
Tenchi chocked out a plea more than a question, and through the warming wind heard his mother sigh in exasperation the way she never did.  
  
"Their spirits seem di-^luted^ because they've been dis-^illusioned^. Can't you see that the man who saved your hide is now toying with their minds? And if you're not strong enough to let your mother go, then surely you wont be able to make that monster leave."  
  
Hammer to stone, fire to petrol, beat his heart back in the right direction, stealing all the blood from his skin in the process.  
  
"SEITA! What has he done?!" Protective natures began boiling over into the few spaces not still clogged by self-pity.  
  
Achika looked down to the side with sad finality, then walked before her headstone to sink and mumble into the ground.  
  
"More now than you can ever understand, and more soon than he can even imagine."  
  
A last desperate spark crawled onward with Tenchi's knees just as the final strands of hair were disappearing beneath him.  
  
"Mother! Please! Tell me!"  
  
He clutched the dirt in his hands again, moments away from digging in after her. During the hesitation another warm wind sent dust up his face. It went unnoticed as more violet milk seeped out of the earth, burning sweet perfume and clinging like tar. Sick slaps mocked his efforts to clean his filthy hands with his filthy hands. Something smooth atop the gravestone chuckled.  
  
***  
  
Into the cutting circuitry, from the sticky rubber, through blinding goggle sweat, and the cracks in Washu's lips never widened. Single minded obsession had consumed her once, then again for good measure, bringing back a paradox of sorts: if she was going to devote every spare moment to this project, she'd have to take moments away to hold back her body's interruptions. Carbohydrate pills turned her stomach's random growls into a steady whimper. Five-second sterilization showers kept things from itching or feeling organic. All these mechanical unpleasantries would maintain her functions well enough to forget them for the long enough to stop counting seconds.  
  
While the latest piece of plasma welding cooled, she rose and looked around her lab with almost jaded emeralds. Nearly every previous invention had been sacrificed to supply the power necessary to create the latest and surely the greatest. The fact that it was finally on the brim of testing capacity struck her as less surreal than terrifying. All the pride she might have been able to allow herself for simply ^trying^ such a thing would not be recognized. There was only room for focus, none left for premonitions of failure, and certainly none for success.  
  
She wiped away some fluids from herself and her workstation and inhaled finely filtered air through a small isolating mask. Machines spoke to themselves out loud and work began again with renewed fervor. It lasted and lasted, but she would outlast him, it was obvious by each beast of burden jerk the tubes made beneath her pitiless little hands. This assembly, an inquisition of molten sparks, might as well be pouring onto his flesh, spread out beneath her gloves all pale and vulnerable. He was going to be a stripped snail, a puddle under a salt block, another kaleidoscope for the microscope, then finally she'd use any leftover slime to seal and gloss her next project.  
  
When a singe met the smallest finger on little Washu's hand she screamed louder than necessary and strangled it. The grind and steam clenching up from her teeth to her temples was very audible.  
  
*Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!  
  
Sputtering breaths caught between a sob and a cough. Washu flipped a switch on the mask away and tried to reclaim both.  
  
*Focus. It's almost finished.  
  
Her fingers went ambitiously relaxed, almost elegant as they prepared to finish conquering. The movement, Washu thought, was Seita-like, even when they clenched in disgust.  
  
*What if it isn't enough? Did I abandon everyone for nothing?  
  
One glove was warmer than the other for lying so close to the project, but putting them back on almost felt reassuring.  
  
*Ryoko, I'm so sorry. He won't hurt you anymore, mommy won't let anyone hurt you again.  
  
It ^was^ almost finished, Washu could tell by hefting it up closer to the light. The weight seemed almost too much but quite reassuring.  
  
***  
  
Moving back in a crustacean scramble, Tenchi kept his eyes fixed on blue oblivion. He noticed the painted fingertips closely enough to see the little ones sharpen each other as they led the way closer. Seita did not pass through the headstone like a ghost, instead his torso grew from it in an ether to match the now vanished milk. The taller man grew over in a monochrome rainbow too slow to dodge. The earth and dead leaves were painful in Tenchi's frozen fists.  
  
"Don't fret young hero, your mother didn't roll over for such a performance." The imposter lowered his hands and crossed them on his back, angling his head to savor the wind through his hair.  
  
None of Seita's seductive calm sagged with his ethereal body before it came to the ground like a dead kite and dissipated back into his legs.  
  
"She's still very dead."  
  
Seita turned casually away and went over to bend over at a right angle. Unnaturally postured to be sure, but he phased his hand into the dirt with the easy movements of somebody reaching in to pull the plug from the bath. Another extreme angle to look Tenchi perpendicularly in the eye.  
  
"And quite buried."  
  
"Sh-She-" Tenchi's rage shivers could have started in shoulder knots, or just as easily in broken organ dams.  
  
"Hm? Speak up Tenchi, I can't hear you." The coroner stood straight and reapproached with a professor's tone.  
  
"She...was...^cremated^!"  
  
One eyebrow raised enough for two, surely Seita could only let his eyes move down to check his incomplete notes. The now mundane dis-hallowed ground smeared his mouth to one side like an artist disappointed but not yet frustrated with the direction of his latest piece.  
  
"Oh. Well doesn't that make me look silly?"  
  
Tenchi was unmoved by the misplaced apology as he backed against a tree and inched to a more upright position, never wavering his glare. After a sharp breath to straighten one then both shoulders, Seita raised his eyes and spoke again with a shrug.  
  
"Mistakes. Misdeeds. Mismatched? Maybe, but let us try to stay focused on the business at hand."  
  
A new fear rippled Tenchi's rage with the sharp lines pulling a smile from the pretty, damned, cruel face. His thoughts crashed, each one speeding from different directions. Questions muffled and accusations blurred over each other.  
  
"Interesting. Inspiring. Invested." Pressing his little point into his thumbprint, he watched the joint flex with each word. The musing gurgled twice for the appropriate voice till a vain poet and a pompous tyrant, fluttering cherubs, could wrap it in sinister velvet.  
  
"Tell me Tenchi, why do you think it is that you all have the same reactions? Why respond with anger rather than relief when these unpleasant little confrontations prove to be mere illusions?"  
  
With two steps fewer between them now Tenchi straightened himself more against the tree and flexed his hands by his pockets instinctively. A kind of clarity was finally entering his thoughts as he realized he was searching for a weapon; misery for malice was a fair and driving enough trade. If only there was something to exchange for terror, perhaps some more rage.  
  
"Why become hostile already? Did I show you a part of yourself you'd rather not admit to? Still waiting for your mother to return to fight your battles?  
  
"Search inside yourself, do you really miss ^her^, or just the ^comfort she provided^?" Red lips remained curled back over his teeth as he spoke, the calm half of his voice seeming to surrender a section to the hiss.  
  
Now that his guest didn't seem to need any closer a podium, Tenchi could reorganize his notes into strength. He looked back into oblivion blue, it had to be undeniable evil and so it had to be met with unwavering courage. For some reason, however, envisioning his last defeated enemy didn't bring back any more than the defiant voice he'd used.  
  
"But-but why would-"  
  
The accusation and challenge in the question fragment wilted and rotted Seita's wiry grin into a cold frown. Like knuckles over a hilt, his face became whiter, smoother, more beautiful to match alluring with dangerous. Stealing light as a trophy, both eyes broke each law of depth and brightness, even for blue. Something swirled to reel Tenchi's initial rage and the rest of his senses into a blank maw, the same unyielding emptiness that this imposter used like a trolley. Connections into questions into bullets through his mind.  
  
*That's where he gets his powers from---that, that ^place^---that horrible ^blank^ ^place^---but what is he trying to do---but what-  
  
"What ---^are you^?" Tenchi muttered, eyes widened and waiting to be swallowed.  
  
Seita closed his eyes to open them at the ground in a half grimace and silent snort.  
  
"I asked you ^one^ specific question, Tenchi. Stop fretting and delaying with why-fors and what-nots and focus on ^how-now^ you'll explain whether you miss your mother, or merely the comfort she provided."  
  
Tenchi half expected to see the blue lights slit accordingly when they rode a slithering voice back up at him. Unable to ignore the re-question any longer, its morbid nature filed into his mind on cold scales. The oldest wound opened fresh again, whimpering retreat from an acid shadow.  
  
"I don't know---"  
  
The air needed savoring again, and Seita brought both hands back to his chest to do it. Slender fingers intertwined, inverted, and bent forward with a crisp snap. Like dust from a rug, the wind carried his sinister hiss off the billows of his velvet tongue.  
  
"That's quite alright, Tenchi. The important thing is not that you answer the question, but that you keep it close." Smugness dotted his closing then crossed his arms.  
  
"Now then, since you only ^half^ answered my question, it would only be fair for me to answer ^one^ of yours."  
  
If formal conversation could match with cruel mind games then hospitality and now hostility could both match with curiosity. Tenchi told himself not to question this strange thought line. The second chapter to Seita's story wouldn't want to share space, and the new narrator couldn't be let out of sight. He tried to control his shaky hands, endure 'it's' freezing expressions, and ignore the throat knot pulled between them.  
  
"Why-what. What-why." A tongue twister married a whistle in Seita's mouth out of refined spite. "Not that you won't assign your own answers regardless, but at least ^what^ won't give away too much of the ^how^."  
  
"'What'---am I?" He mused almost sarcastically. "Mean. Monstrous. Generic. Geriatric." He walked to the side of a large tree, looking toward the mountains for some unseen and invaluable audience. A short pace started his hands in motion, three steps, sermon, lecture, critique, all to the left all to the right. An anchored glare kept every neck muscle in flex.  
  
"Same. Old. Meaning. Less. Destruction and dishonesty, whether direct or indirect, they are both greater in their shrines than in their wakes. No 'justice' can undo the mistrust a charlatan creates."  
  
It was too cold a sensation to be nausea, but Tenchi fought it back the same as he watched Seita trace a little fingernail from the center of his bottom lip up the side of his face to pull back a few stray but completely yielding hairs.  
  
"I am, above all, someone who understands this. I am, beyond all, someone who ^wields^ this."  
  
The word softened in his throat as he paused to run his fingers along the tree bark in a light caress.  
  
"Your other guests will simply dismiss me as a promise breaker-"  
  
Tenchi yanked his weak joints from the ground but focused too much energy into his fists to step forward. It was difficult to project his voice beyond a growl.  
  
"What have you done to them?"  
  
"First and foremost; I've started a session with ^you^, breaking their, 'our' agreement. It might have lasted quite a while as it wasn't particularly hard to combine their love and their shame---into silence, for your sake."  
  
Both fists shook more sporadically when Tenchi forced his face down and away. He was ready to explode, but forced to implode when he looked back up and almost into Seita's chest. The defensive step back was all reflex, the entertainment on the taller man's face all assurance.  
  
"Hm. They, and you as well, have all been merely warm ups for a much more personal project, but that goes back to the 'why' and 'how', and I've still not the time to explain them, certainly not now that I've just more than worn out my welcome."  
  
Tenchi showed no sign of disagreeing with his slight of humor.  
  
"But when I am finished here, ^what^ will ^you^ remember me as?!  
  
Seita pushed Tenchi back another step with only a face full of teeth and eyes. He ran both hands along his scalp, pulling his hair and face back in a tense smear of psychotic grandeur. His fingers dug in, each elbow trembled like a bleeding wing.  
  
"Should it be the stage title I presented to Ryoko? The 'Ghost of Madness'? Should I flatter myself further, and suggest that I not be mentioned by any name, less I am ^summoned^ by it?"  
  
The first few breaths were painfully deep, but at last Tenchi caught a glimpse of focus. He could see this madman burning under ^his^ steadying glare, and he could feel Jurai energy at his fingertips.  
  
"I am what I see, and I see what I will! And I WILL!" Something bloody and coarse imitated speech in Seita's throat as it was swallowed into a point.  
  
"The doctors into merchants. The merchants into gods. The last-real- friend into the first-real-enemy. The 'religious' 'retreat' into the ^insane^ ^asylum^!"  
  
It might have been cold sweat running down Tenchi's cheek; he was remembering his mother's imitation and reeling for a touch of his mother's memory, begging it tell him not to be afraid. The laugh should have come with a spray of slime but only carried Seita's voice higher.  
  
"I have seen the black pooling blood meet the white ice! I have watched mothers and fathers---turn their sons and daughters---into ^dolls^ and ^martyrs^!  
  
Only showy clothes and hair seemed to catch this wind. Tenchi winced at the next scream; so shrill it should have begun a sob.  
  
"I have taken my name---from the ^grave^ of ^fate^!"  
  
Elegant hands tore away from Seita's head like claws and clutched up at the air. Something too white to be milk bled down his forearms and veined into his sleeves. One welling power was just overwhelming enough to pull Tenchi from this glimpse of the unspeakable.  
  
"I will twist the highest genius into the deepest isolation! I will press sterile compassion into festered cruelty! I have been the acting nemesis of life itself, and I am ^more invulnerable every moment^!"  
  
The Light Hawk Wing tingled up Tenchi's forearm, but now it wouldn't let him take his eyes off Seita anymore than Seita would look away from his own hands. Sensual lips tested the air around the words, passing a specter calm over and behind the prince's eyes.  
  
"By my design---every being in every layer of existence---will bow to the illusions of the mind---and cast off the illusion of the soul. I saw the ends of the universe yesterday---and I will see the end of the universe tomorrow."  
  
This sword doesn't feel strong enough for this, Tenchi thought. It did start to feel heavier though, when Seita lowered his hands and walked slowly forward, stepping on every syllable like a path of flower petals.  
  
"I am a hateful reflection captured in a fistful of mirror shards." Seita clenched his hand beneath his chin. A watery tar dipped off his bottom lip into his palm. "I am a rainbow chewed to white powder," he clenched his hand, "carried on a blown kiss". His lips puckered coquettishly and spread dust to settle between them.  
  
"That's as far as you go." Tenchi forced in a memory of Kagato, forced himself to believe that it had been more frightening than this. This half smile was no more confident. It couldn't be.  
  
"Can you truly trust the Jurai power---knowing that so much of it has invested itself ^here^?"  
  
"I won't let you hurt anyone else."  
  
"All the stars in the universe could not touch me, Tenchi." A large circle of nothing dilated behind his long blink of taunting calm. "But would you try your luck beyond them?"  
  
*I'm going to collapse if I don't charge soon. Tsunami, please help me.  
  
"Come be the hero, Tenchi." Seita stepped into the portal but leaned forward. "Come and sacrifice yourself for your hearth and ^harem^!" He managed to make a smile violating. "Dare you imagine what I have planned...after I leave you as helpless as I left them?"  
  
Lighthawk power lunged into oblivion. The sixth guest merely stepped back to guide it into an unmarked spot in the surrounding forest. Momentum sucked away and in a moment the blink of emptiness knocked the wind out of Tenchi's courage and sent him rolling through the pine needles and shrubbery. Enough adrenaline remained to pull him back to his feet, ready to meet every opponent in any arena. He spared a breath to check his weapon and shuddered. The reflection on the blade melted into empty androgyny. Bloodless confidence read its own lips.  
  
"You've been a very gracious host, and a mostly cooperative subject. My work here is finally coming to climax; yet, till then, I must put some distance between us."  
  
The reflection blinked on a grin while the sword readied to wane or explode.  
  
"There is one more thing you should consider during your race to stop me."  
  
*Tsunami...how did this sword get so heavy?  
  
"In regards and reevaluations to all these headstones, ask yourself this: how will your children grieve in ^your^ passing? Will they be like so many snails, brooding in thick raincoats? Or, will they be like fireflies with tattered umbrellas...^dancing^ in your ashes?"  
  
Tenchi roared through the fading hiss and cried into silence.  
  
***  
  
He crossed over again as he had before, taking a moment to be absorbed into both the ends, the loss of all perception tempting and terrifying him. Ambrosia swallowed pure white and within reach. But once more he reminded himself that he was still far from ripe, and thus sight and sound returned as the only necessary tools. Consciousness and will unencumbered, transcendence known at last to be merely removal, Seita studied the time and space he'd just left, pleased that Tenchi was still screaming at his encore illusion rather than trying to find a way back home. A hunger for the omnipresence required to enjoy his host's futile race struck him, at once tormenting and invigorating. That very ambition would focus and maneuver a memory into a map and a compass. Lining up puzzle pieces was easy when immune to matter and removed from time. Mechanically divine speed and precision had taken some time and space, but they were the only ways to travel.  
  
---  
  
Seita stepped purposefully out of an oblivion portal just inside the Masaki front door. Soft boot taps echoed hauntingly through the house, exorcising any other sound. He could count and measure and listen to his steps with one hand behind his back and another caressing his lips. All the tranquilizing wonder he'd walked through on that first day could have: ^had^ been extracted through heated lard and perfume-spray-painted onto his nails. It was all plainly visible there, in his tiny reflection, in blue eyes turned purple in the cherry gloss. Both palms near his face he could breathe it all in, but something, a chuckle started in his nose and spread to his teeth. Revealed as rage; soft hands and smooth face crushed something into each other for a trembling moment.  
  
The gasp was silent; keep control, but first check if that was a noise from the living room. Seita could keep this step even with both hands behind his back. Nostalgia forgot itself in a finely framed mirror and he kept watch over himself as he passed, kept walking till the smallest corner of his eye rewound and paused him. It could have been a planned detour.  
  
A cold glare affirmed that it was not. Through every colored line, from the angles and curves of his features to the creases and folds of his clothes, the costume was flawless. Even the darker tones and sharper corners were warm, but they were all holding themselves up to spite and up for nothing. Seita still kept strangling his androgyny into bloom with a depth that impressions can only project.  
  
There were no lighthearted giggles from boy's voluntarily kidnapped to play dress up with the girls. There was no peacemaking or comradery between opposite ends. There wasn't any artistic experimentation. The reflection only caught a few glares of light while it sharpened the already razor chisel. Harnessed vanity: ever consuming and violently unwilling to be denied fullest power over ^all^ genders. In a pirouette-fraction he pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes seductively, and spread his fingers to crush adoring worlds against untouchable cheeks. What might have given him pause only widened the sails that fanned the flame. He left the stage with a grin, sinister smug to keep the public's addiction.  
  
"So where did everybody go?" Seita thought out loud in a delicate voice. Slightly heavier steps took his glance into the kitchen then squeaked rubber to wood, twisting him toward a sharp snorting sound.  
  
The princess and the pirate were sprawled out either side of the largest couch, their bodies so limp that Seita wondered how 'dead' asleep they could be. In answer to his question, Ryoko rolled her head over and continued snoring more evenly. Aeka meanwhile began to snore in a decidedly more feminine manner as if trying to 'unconsciously' out-charm her rival. One eyebrow raised in curiosity soon slid down and narrowed and shined a new reflection at the collection of sake bottles on and around the coffee table. He approached with the most hushed and chilling chuckle he could manage, looking from the impressive display of glass below to the shameful women on either side.  
  
By casual selection, he picked up a bottle and held it in front of his lips. A low whistle billowed out and filled the living room like a gently rising foghorn. When neither of them even stirred at the serenade, he crinkled his mouth to the side and put his instrument down roughly. The sudden clang of glass against the coffee table made one bottle roll off onto the floor. Still no reaction or sake left.  
  
The fabric tightened around his crossed arms and made them as slender as his eyes were narrow. He looked out the window at the light, looked down at the floor to his left, and watched his shadow move between them like a winding clock hand. Even with all the silent brooding and throaty breathing, with dresses wrinkled and hair tangled, the two young women managed a tranquil infant innocence. A pull at the corner of his lips could have been a reflexive smile or a nervous tick but didn't last long enough for either.  
  
Ryoko shifted slightly with another small snort and Aeka rubbed her nose reflexively. Stone readiness covered Seita's face till it was dry enough for another layer of glossy malice and a wonderful idea. He breathed himself ready and again twisted the threat of reflection again to the glory of projection. Two steps back and both hands together.  
  
"I was wondering if I'd ever get the proper opportunity for something like this," he began in a seductive croon.  
  
Ryoko turned over gently and knocked another empty bottle from the end table to the floor.  
  
"You've both been very good about keeping our sessions out of Tenchi's concern. But, since he knows about them now, I guess were back to where we started." A thoughtful hum stretched bitter lines into his face and pressed his fingers together more tightly.  
  
"Now this usually isn't as potent as the direct approach, but I just can't resist an opportunity for two birds...with one egg." What might have been a chuckle, sucked in through his clenched teeth into a hideous, jerking wheeze.  
  
"It was a clever idea Ryoko---to remember that intoxicated people are out of my reach. However, ^unconscious^ people are practically in the palm of my hand---" Ceremony brought Seita's hands down and lust clutched them to his belly "--- in the walls of my womb."  
  
***  
  
The afternoon sun beamed through the blinds and made tiny specks of dust into floating faeries. Aeka gently nodded back and forth in a homey rocking chair. Her face was tilted downward but it held a smile far away enough to be utterly lost in a beautiful memory or completely aware of the wonderful present. As she rocked herself she hummed a tune rather like a lullaby. The melody and the soft quality of her throat filled and soothed the entire room. Aeka ran her hand over a large bulge on her lap. It was nice to enjoy the softness of her maternity dress, a pleasant intermission between joyous kicks of life. She stopped humming and ran both hands down as if preparing to hug the child within even closer. For a moment she thought she felt a response. Her eyes widened, her head shot up, and she cried out the father's name in a gasp of pain.  
  
---  
  
The waterfalls of the onsen sang about Ryoko's feet as she simultaneously brushed her hair and caressed the bulge of flesh. She tickled it with the longer strands spoke to the extra buoyancy in a playful yet motherly tone.  
  
"So how long are you planning to stay in there huh? If you get any bigger I actually ^am^ going to need Tenchi's help to take a bath-" her eyes shimmered with the water's reflection as she stared intensely at the beads of condensation on her belly.  
  
"Isn't that right?" She called over to the man walking towards her with a wooden bucket of bath supplies over himself. He merely smiled and began to crouch down at her side.  
  
"Wow Tenchi! Feel!"  
  
Ryoko grabbed his hand and pulled him forward roughly, he barely kept his balance but relaxed instantly at the reminder. After he felt no movement for a few seconds Ryoko grabbed desperately onto his shoulder. She looked up at him with wide and nearly terrified eyes; her own sense of pain seemed to overwhelm him past the possible severance of a limb. They knocked the bathing bucket into the water as they stood each other up.  
  
---  
  
A chaotic flurry of sterile turquoise fabric and the clamor of medical equipment swirled around the first princess of Jurai. But the doctors, along with her second thoughts about having her child on earth, were completely obscured in an explosion of pain.  
  
---  
  
Ryoko looked around desperately at the masked faces surrounding her. Her whole body clenched in frustration that every time she tried to call out for Tenchi a surge of pain made it impossible to do anything but scream.  
  
---  
  
Aeka took one last look into Tenchi's eyes and tried to deliver her will. She managed one small prayer before every sense that she possessed replaced itself with agony. It finally ended with the sight of a doctor bending to retrieve the prize, but was it always so painful?  
  
---  
  
Every triumph in her past cowered before the pain Ryoko screamed her every breath at. Just as Ryoko's scream delivered its fire the heat was replaced by an icy doubt; this was not how giving birth was supposed to be.  
  
---  
  
Both new mothers collapsed backwards in exhaustion. They tried to smile up at their Tenchi but neither could manage more than a weak grimace. The new fathers remained motionless in prayer as the mothers slowly dawned confusion at the lack of sound coming from their children. Ryoko and Aeka sat upright in a whisk of sweat and a wave of fear.  
  
The doctors kept their faces in the shadow holding the newborns in thin white towels, at arm's length, and without breath. At first sign of life from the mothers they robotically set the bundles down on metal tables at the foot of the beds. The fathers' hands slipped and fell to their sides as if they'd been struck dead while the mothers lowered their knees and wiped their eyes to get a better look. The towels slid away slowly from the wet new skin.  
  
***  
  
Washu leapt from her chair and clutched her skull. It would have been such a crippling scream had it escaped, luckily she only managed a gasping dead version of a choke. Emeralds flew up from the stone and the genius braced against the nearest control board.  
  
Within the hospital room she noticed platinum hair flowing down the shoulders of two identical doctors. Their faces simmered in the dark while fingers flexed and mouths ungulated with chewed tongues. She felt for a moment that a rubber glove was suffocating her and the vision was gone. With heavy steps and heavier breathing she walked towards a machine resembling a fire hose nozzle. Panic reflected off and filled in its bulk and complexity then ran partly down the length of a thickly twisted black wire python.  
  
"Now. I have to do it ^now^!" Bits of saliva sputtered out as Washu spoke in a desperate whisper.  
  
She clutched the machine's handles and began to drag its unending burden behind her with more insane determination than any slave.  
  
***  
  
"It's just as I suspected," the doctor began in cold monotone, "the baby is deformed... and stillborn as a result of inbreeding." Every ugly enough word exited the doctor's mouth with an extra sentiment of disgust, yet with an almost poetic dignity of someone waiting to speak the line.  
  
The doctor didn't look up from his diagnosis even as a princess stared wildly at him. She trembled her head over to her child. Two points and the initial shock dissolved; Aeka's hands flew to her mouth as her organs and face strangled themselves. Her child was white rot doused with sickly purple. Blood dripped from erratically bloated, curled, and fused little fingers onto the loose skin around its ribs. The skull was gnarled and lumpy, grasped and squeezed like a piece of clay. Its left eye socket lulled in folds of flesh as if half its face had tried to melt away. One pupil-less but bloodshot eye stared back with cold and miserable accusation.  
  
Aeka noticed that Tenchi had moved to the doctor's side with a pale face and no expression. She was in hell and had given birth to a piece of it. It was impossible to gather the energy to look up amid the stench pouring forth from her fruit, her tree. A quagmire of filth bubbled in the First Princess's throat as she began to slowly convulse.  
  
---  
  
"Oh my GOD doctor, what...what ^is it^!?" The nurse wailed as she cowered behind the doctor. Authority, still masked, merely starred at child. She trembled and looked pitifully from the doctor, to Tenchi, then at the back of the seemingly normal baby's head. Ryoko leaned forward in hideous fear that the first child had not survived. Her heart jumped as it began to turn and face her.  
  
The baby's first sound filled the room and poured rusty slime into its mother's lungs. Something between a hiss and a gurgle grew louder, into a growl, a putrid vibration. When it finally faced Ryoko she saw blood bubbling in the back of its throat and oozing out over jagged teeth that jutted forth like splintered wood. Yellowed emaciation stretched over the tiny skeleton, ribs expanded and paled as it breathed.  
  
Mind like a heated, swelling boil, Ryoko listened to her baby grow louder, watched its pupils catch a glare of deathly green light. When she saw it trying to claw towards her with viciously pointed little fingers she dug her own hands into her sides and sobbed hysterically into her knees. Even with eyes buried, that monstrous face reminded her that she was indeed the most despicable creature in the universe. Thoughts smashed and crumbled into each other, discarding her in pieces among this draining shower.  
  
Somehow the mothers were able to choke out Tenchi's name, and somehow he didn't seem to hear it as he shuffled away, speaking aloud but obviously to himself.  
  
"What have I done..." Guilt rivers ran to fill disgusted lakes. ---  
  
The masses on either side of the couch began to shrink insanely into fetal positions. Seita watched them with a Cheshire bite till his doctors picked up the metal trays, still holding them at arm's length as they turned towards the wall. A furnace door opened and received the packages with a gristle sizzle, a steam scream, and two belches of flame.  
  
Ryoko and Aeka exploded into consciousness with screeches that tore their throats down into wailing sobs. They clutched their heads and hugged their knees like terrified children waiting for be saved or devoured. Their horror shocked a pause rather than dissipated as they stared at each other. When finally still enough to make lasting eye contact their red faces turned pale. The third source of heavy breathing in the room gradually became the most pronounced. They both moved to face Seita at the same time, neither with any more enthusiasm than a rusted hinge.  
  
He drove air through a perversely accomplished smile and into the dead spider cage of his fingertips. Ryoko and Aeka could see their agony being relished in piercing blue cruelty. In a single fluid motion Seita rose to his feet and parted his hands in triumphant closure. Aeka shivered her eyes wide enough to see past him and noticed the long-sealed door to Wash's lab. It unveiled a disheveled yet determined young soldier who dragged her bulky weapon along like life itself.  
  
"Think nothing of accuracy, your visions---" Seita trailed off but gradually regained some composure in a few knuckle cracks. "Real doctors would never behave in such a manner...they always require ^much^ more paperwork."  
  
A smug smile and a straightened posture brought his sharpness to a point. Aeka glanced over at Ryoko and saw the deep gouges she was making in the couch as she also struggled to look away.  
  
"Isn't that right, Dr. Hakube?" Freshly pursed lips asked curtly; ^he^ didn't need to turn to flaunt of his acute perception. Washu stopped about five feet behind him, but her violent determination was engraved. Seita turned leisurely to face her while Ryoko and Aeka stared at the bulky machine the miniature scientist was hefting up her side.  
  
"My-my Little-Washu. What have you got there?" The imposter asked and took her apparent age seriously.  
  
Professor Hakube looked up and matched hatred to any sinister amusement, face quaking from cutting brow to grinding teeth. She fused her hand onto the machines coarse lever like a demon's bridle and pulled it over and past emergency. Its cylindrical nose emitted a slow light that spread like a slide projector into fog. Once the space an inch beyond Seita was illuminated, Washu pushed forward again causing the light, the man, and the family chair all to vanish. The three women kept an entire minute empty till Washu dropped to one knee without letting go of her machine. Ryoko and Aeka rushed forward a few reflexive steps but were both still too shaken to do more than stare. The day's mother of invention looked down at her new child and gasped out a mad smile.  
  
"I'm...^a genius^!"  
  
***  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Seven is Mother-  
  
-Part 2-  
  
Effortless and unrepentant---will beg to be restrained.  
  
Begging a will for vengeance---can justice be maintained?  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
Soft, stylish, stealthy, Jurain Nobles spared no expense when it came to footwear. Duke Mitziru remembered something someone had said somewhere 'a royal guard can hear a cotton ball decal drop across the room'. He thought on this, then told himself not to. This was more than an important trip; it was a monumental honor of an assignment. He'd take whatever passage instructed and give no more information than was allowed, even if it did make him look suspicious...even if it ^would^ make him look suspicious ^should^ anyone see his route. Not likely, so 'walk like a Noble in all places at all times, head high, feet sure'. Though he couldn't remember when he'd heard it last, it had been his father saying it, and that was good enough.  
  
Quiet, clean, Queenly, Funaho listened to one Noble footfall after the other, one too many cotton balls. She considered how to place her own steps out from her hiding place. There were so many natural notches found in the old, inefficient, and conveniently obscure passage, surely people had hid...'waited' in them before. If no one before herself (enough recent times to count) then her judgment would justify this new use, and that was good enough.  
  
With a popular tune sung under a whisper, the Duke passed by, feet sure, head high. Funaho thought on how his shoes hardly matched his robe, then told herself not to. And, since his oblivious shoulders beckoned her not to waste an element of surprise, she remained calmly leaned into the wood grooves.  
  
"Duke Mitziru."  
  
Never let them see you taken off guard, his father might have said that shortly before he died. Was the diagnosis still an unknown virus? No matter, Mitziru told himself, just take a few more steps before you stop and don't turn till after you've spoken.  
  
"Who is there?" The Duke surely knew already, but had decided to be formally polite.  
  
"I must have a word with you." Funaho stepped out onto the main path, both arms folded calmly into her sleeves.  
  
An unfamiliar and very feminine voice: how curious. Not too young, not quite old enough for a Duchess.  
  
Ah, that was it, must be, surely his intuitions were as flawless as his instructions. He turned to face ^another^ of his all too many disappointing and discharged concubines. Wasn't it his place to forget them as he chose? Did they all have to seek him out in private?  
  
"My dear lady," Mitziru began, not even quarter turned yet, "I am sorry, but it is not my place to offer you fertility treatments. If you'd like a recommendation for a-"  
  
Funaho remained calm, almost serene, save for the heavier left corner of her mouth.  
  
"M---M-M-My Queen!" Executions hadn't been carried out through beheading for eons, but, for Mitziru's last moments, it felt right to clutch his throat anyway.  
  
"These tunnels to the landing docks are quite old...but I doubt you're traveling for historic scenery."  
  
Clearly The First Queen of Jurai had a great deal of patience, too much in fact to waste it on formalities in this situation. The business at hand would have to begin now and wait another time.  
  
"Your highness, please forgive my foolishness." Clammy hands hadn't felt so out of place round his neck till he had to fling them to his sides for a deep bow.  
  
"Rise Duke."  
  
Perhaps if she'd have said 'be at peace' or 'at ease' or even 'A- rise'...or ^please^, then he figured he would have done so more smoothly. Shiny skin did not befit a Noble, but in this case it was better to sweat than urinate. In person and impatient, the Queen really was more striking than a rendering; to think she was an off-worlder.  
  
"It is an honor to---is there anything at all I can do for you, my Queen?" It wouldn't have made his father proud, but it was a quick recovery just the same.  
  
"Just the one thing," she blinked slowly to make sure she was looking him directly through the eyes and almost felt pity for the suddenly fragile man.  
  
Duke Mitziru barely opened his mouth and clearly heard his teeth click from slamming it shut again.  
  
"Whatever your 'immediate' plans are, change them. Where you are going; remain a distant spectator, do not make your presence known. Then, when you return, report that The Princess Aeka did not respond."  
  
It was an unpleasant thing to hear a man gulp from a few meters away. In her position she thought she'd have grown accustomed by now. While she was silently considering being less intimidating this time, or perhaps the next, Duke Mitziru spoke, recited, and tried to make his case a statement rather than a plea.  
  
"I'm sorry, your highness. My plans---my ^orders^ come from The Emperor himself."  
  
"I doubt that."  
  
Having not meant to sound so cold, Funaho cleared herself with a breath, hoping the Duke would take the opportunity to do so himself.  
  
"I think it is far more likely," she continued with a lesson for any future diplomat, "that your orders come from someone representing my husband. Therefore; a direct order from myself or my Sister-Queen would supercede it."  
  
Funaho hoped relaxing her voice a little further might keep the man in one piece.  
  
"That is the case, is it not?"  
  
Disregard a formal request with the Emperor's seal...or lie to The First Queen of Jurai? Perhaps there had been a more difficult crossroad somewhere down the Mitziru family line, but that didn't matter now. There was no bride more sought after than Princess Aeka, no more noble a task than saving her from the glamours of that unknown and unfit planet, and no wrath more terrible than a Queen's.  
  
What would Tsunami want? Honor the father's hand or honor the mother's face? Who held his family's name in the palm of his hand? Who had The Great Yosho named his tree after?  
  
"It is." The Duke bowed with the ordeal's first real breath, taking it in reverence would be an appropriate and wise decision.  
  
"Good. Thank you." Funaho formally relieved them both mid turn.  
  
"Of course, anything---anything for the mother of our-"  
  
"That will be all, Lord Mitziru."  
  
Speaking sharply while still walking away, Funaho was far more intimidating than her husband's seal.  
  
***  
  
Washu's legs swayed slightly as she remained hunched and perhaps welded over the bulky apparatus. Ryoko and Aeka each took a step back, respectfully afraid to burden their lingering shock with anything more. Emeralds burned sulfur up from the ground, glaring at them under a mat of septic red bristles, speaking between another set of exhausted breaths.  
  
"Greatest...invention...yet."  
  
Her stunned audience slowly looked down at the achievement in question, plainly ominous for its lack of smoke, noise, or even a blinking light. Looking from her daughter to Aeka, Washu followed their eyes back down to apparent but uncertain salvation.  
  
"Wha---what just happened?" Ryoko leveled a weak stare, sitting back on the couch, bent over tightly gripped arms.  
  
"Seita? Did you-" Aeka managed to whimper before her own hands tried to seal her mouth.  
  
A spark of excited pride for the muted, a bit lip for the crippled, then Washu traded it all for a hesitant glance back down at her machine.  
  
"I'm not sure, I didn't exactly have an opportunity for a test run." She breathed in another step away from hyperventilation.  
  
"Then what the hell ^did^ you do?!" Ryoko furled her hair up and around clenched teeth and fists. Were her jaw not chattering, were her elbows not still cowering in her stomach, she would have looked ready for battle.  
  
Washu sensed, reflected, and displayed her daughter's fear for a blink. Speaking to the machine was easier, even if it darkened her voice past any professionalism.  
  
"Ryoko, Aeka, this here is likely the most powerful atomic transmitter in the entire universe. I couldn't explain how difficult it was to simply make a prototype."  
  
"But, isn't that-" Aeka began pointing in anxious disbelief.  
  
"Yes, well, it's basically the same system that all higher grade ships have for transporting cargo and passengers. It essentially draws all the atoms in a selected area into manageable size and reassembles them in a new location...hm, such a simple concept now for something that was once thought impossible." Washu grinned in a failed attempt at humor and continued, still trying to rebuild some degree of confidence. "The problem is...Seita's atoms do not function like any I've ever seen, and trust me, I've seen a lot.  
  
"What most people don't realize is that every time, say, Aeka transports from her ship and back, a few atoms get lost along the way, usually within loose skin cells and other detritus. Even the most advanced transporters can only hold onto atoms that have some sort of structure condensing them together.  
  
"Now, like I said, he's different, he can't be transported easily for the same reason he can't be touched; his atoms won't hold still. It gets more complicated from there, but the main point is that I did not vaporize him, I merely transported him to a 'containment unit' in my lab."  
  
A wicked little genius grin disturbed a reminder of the subject in question. Both younger women cringed a little, but Washu took no notice and continued with a convincing mad scientist quiver.  
  
"I'll decide what to do with him from there. It's taken almost all my available resources to construct the equipment necessary to function at such a complete atomic level...but I think it will be worth it."  
  
"You're sure he's...^contained^?" Aeka gulped.  
  
There was silence till Washu finally regained her breath, professional tone, and a better posture.  
  
"If anything in science can bring him down to size, it's this." The little genius hefted the big device a little more.  
  
"Now that you finally know what I've been confining myself to the lab for; try to have some faith in it. You've both found out first hand that Seita is more than just a pretty trickster, and we may never know exactly ^what^ he wants, but I'm not about to let him make guinea pigs of us!" The spitting violence in her vow brought out an eye-shimmer of unspoken and currently unspeakable empathy between the three women.  
  
Aeka stepped back and bowed her head, speaking in formality to hide whatever damage she could.  
  
"There's no telling what might have happened had you not intervened, I am eternally grateful Miss---I-I mean-" Formality stuttered nervously.  
  
"Don't worry about it, ^your highness^," Washu managed a weak smirk as she began dragging the heavy device and its thick hose back to her lab, "I'm doing this for everyone."  
  
Ryoko's head unburied itself from her hands with mouth faltering between faint throat noises.  
  
"For everyone." Washu whispered again to herself, or perhaps simply thought it very directly. Her daughter closed her mouth and sank back into both hands.  
  
Hardly noticing that she was hugging herself with her mother's strength, Aeka spoke gently to the air.  
  
"Please Tenchi, come home safely."  
  
***  
  
If the lab seemed farther removed, Washu had reasoned, she'd be less worried about damaging the house and less tempted by Sasami's cooking. This would make it easier to pour every resource she had into Seita's capture. Now, as she lumbered down a less than aerodynamic flight of dimly lit steps, the mass of her still unnamed invention made her wondered if it had all been truly necessary. One generic lifting android, she could have spared just one, a simple arm even. She'd have to type soon, raw or numb or not, her little fingers hadn't earned their break yet.  
  
Keeping the lights dim was definitely overdoing it, keep this up and you'll need glasses by age 30,000, she joked to herself. The brutal efficiency that had taken her this far spoke up now, arguing that the light path was technically expendable itself; the hose led directly back to where she needed to be, through and around the armored arches left ajar. It was almost surprising that college memories could still resurface at such a time; all those extension cords smuggled into restricted reactor rooms, all those professors following them back to her dorm with sure path, short fuse, and small wonder.  
  
The automatic recognition doors sealed again the moment she and the hose were clear. Head down, still retracing step residue round to the right, she'd have only to glance up-left to see what the near entirety of her science was good for. But haste made waste. But the greatest scientific genius in the universe didn't need to rush. But Little Washu was in no hurry to face those eyes again; she watched and waited for the hose to retract completely, snaking its way back into the wall with a cold steel over rubber shuffle. Until there was power to spare she'd have to use stationary computers, during the final equipment check the lights behind her reflected on the dark screen. There was a humanoid figure standing very still and very tall.  
  
Even as she digested it, she could still taste iron. The deep baritone vibration of the largest generator was faintly shaking the floor, but the lab was otherwise silent. Out of habit or reflex she listened for the distinctive beeps of a vital function monitor, forgetting that she'd never even thought of adding one.  
  
No time to dote and doubt on such things, she should be like a Samurai, hesitant to re-sheath his sword after a battle won too easily. By all means the analogy should have made her smile or at least more willing to turn around. There was no room for reluctance now and only track enough for one train of thought.  
  
*Face him, Washu.  
  
*An unnecessary risk.  
  
She steadied her hand on a small box in her pocket.  
  
*I could end this all right now.  
  
*An unnecessary risk.  
  
*Perhaps I should wait till I'm better prepared.  
  
*An unintelligent risk.  
  
Something very primal, an instinct injection made her ankles hurt as she pivoted one eighty---one, just in case.  
  
*Show him who the ^real^ genius is.  
  
*An unintelligent-  
  
Two walls of rain gray tubing and onyx mirror panels shared a room-size box between them, faint orange light as sturdy a face as glass. The recliner was on its side in the far right corner, Seita smiled a forgiven debt of patience from the near center. Till she was more or less a meter away Washu kept her approach slow. Once decided to inversely cross her arms in front of her she kept their eyes locked.  
  
*It's easy, people have said 'you look emotionless' lots of time, especially when I was working.  
  
"There was nothing but a disorienting white light." Recounting a major turning point in his youth, Seita let the biographer feel both fortunate and unnecessary. "And for a moment I remembered vividly my first glimpse of oblivion, to truly feel 'nothing' again as a result of someone ^else's^ will."  
  
Seita brought one arm forward with grace-like leisure. Washu watched him watch the minute details between his thumb and seemingly longer littlest nail.  
  
"So, in quaint remembrance of empathy, and since you went through all this trouble, I'll at least let you say your peace before I depart to finish my work here."  
  
"Try it."  
  
Washu savored every fraction of Seita's face as it sank to her instant ice challenge. He squinted, searching insistently till at last he retreated back into a smug smile.  
  
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to ask me a question or two first? Surely there must be some curiosity lurking around all that fear." He took half of the step between himself and the energy field. Washu sunk her fingernails stoically deeper into her biceps.  
  
At first it was encouraging just to blink, to know she could. When Seita did the same, more or less naturally, there wasn't as much reassurance as she'd have liked. From there Kagato was next in line in between them. One of the few beings she'd ever considered a formidable opponent, he'd almost never directly looked at anyone unless he was looking down on them. That should have been an early warning. So what was it about that story introduction that should have been telltale?  
  
*All of it. I should have been nothing but skeptical, instead I let myself get curiouser and curiouser. Why did he-  
  
*No, Washu. Don't ask him any questions, not yet, not on his terms.  
  
Without breaking contact, Seita positioned his hand against his face, knuckles on cheek, thumb on jaw, and nail into bottom lip, prodding, ticking. She was far enough away for him not to have to angle his head much; regardless of significant heights, he obviously wasn't looking down. This was an entirely new game.  
  
He could project private memories, but Washu figured he wasn't a telepath, couldn't be literally probing her thoughts. At worst he was speculating better than he should. She knew that she was still focused on the beginning stage, finding a point of inspiration to focus and advance from. Somewhere behind all that lovely blue was the thing that found it--- 'fitting' that she remember her lost son by all but reliving one of their most traumatic moments together.  
  
*Is that what he wanted, just to re-salt and old wound?  
  
As soon as she let herself frown she regretted it. Small favor that Seita didn't seem to notice, in fact, he seemed to be something like perplexed as well. No, not perplexed.  
  
*Not perplexed at all. He still thinks he's going to walk effortlessly out of this thing, he must still be planning what to do afterward.  
  
*But, that must mean he hasn't actually tried to yet.  
  
Washu breathed her frown back into dead balance.  
  
*I hope.  
  
And then there it was, a shrug of an exasperated sigh. He'd simply been looking for a hole in her confidence and thus a crack in his box. That part was over.  
  
"Very well," Seita brought his hand up, little finger pointing and ready test the wind's direction.  
  
A ripple of static crackled softly at the point of impact and physically bounced his entire arm back. He watched incredulously as countless atoms from the sharp colored tip dispersed then regrouped like a school of fish accidentally swimming into a dam. In two quick motions he tried to make an 'x' but only the first slash had enough matter. It took a little longer for the entire finger to reform.  
  
He took a relaxing breath, raised his hand again in a beauty queen wave, and readied to push with both eyes shut tight. Washu marveled, having never seen him exert any physical energy away from outdoor chores. Similarly she could not help but be startled when he shot his fist forward with a loud strike of static.  
  
Steeped in confused frustration, Seita stepped back, right knuckle over his lips, left hand crossed over his midsection to support the right thinking elbow. It was still obvious that he wasn't evaluating a work of art, but an infuriating equation. Washu could not keep herself from taking another step forward, unknowingly imitating a sinister grin.  
  
Seita refolded his hands back behind him and genuinely scowled pure enough to melt emerald. The subhuman hiss, the perverse whisper, all of the effeminately affected yet surreally chilling voices Washu had heard through Ryoko fell away. She could only bet half her degrees that this was a glimpse into the voice he spoke with before Kagato's experiments. The strikingly mundane combination of nasal isolation and analytical masculinity froze her thoughts.  
  
"Congratulations Professor Hakube, you have created and atomic containment unit more powerful than I imagined possible."  
  
Moving as naturally as pseudo silence, Washu dropped her hands into her pockets and tried not to squeeze the contents of one too tightly.  
  
"My form cannot relax enough to phase through this field, however-"  
  
After so much focusing will, it infuriated Washu to be distracted by a foreboding little wiggle across his fingers. When she looked back up there was no room or time to reassert herself in the game.  
  
"I doubt it is imposing enough to affect my capacity, my connection to-"  
  
Cutting himself off, Seita's clenched brow weighed his head down with a jerk. Washu squinted then stared shivers at a white circle no larger than a golf ball hovering at slender chest level. Her prisoner's eyes widened as well, but with a completely different emotion.  
  
He violently arched his fingertips together behind the opening and tightened his mouth in a desperate rage. It wavered in size, increasing diameter an inch or so, then falling back even smaller. This continued on for an hour's minute; the prisoner shaking with determination while the captor stood rigid, petrified that his efforts would be successful despite her own.  
  
The unofficial but obvious ending tore oblivion from Seita's grasp as the sweat on his hands slipped his fingers to intersect together. Washu allowed herself to breath again as he pumped air through clenched teeth and shook his hands involuntarily, the motion of it made her pause long enough to catch a glimpse of a comparatively frail body. The veins on his forearms and tendons in his neck were ready to burst forth from his skin and strangle everything in sight. A few minuscule taps of static sounded on the containment field as spittle flung over his barred teeth. Through all this only his eyes spoke of anything more than a child's tantrum, pitiful despite the rage necessary to destroy all of existence.  
  
Like animals cornered, Washu knew that tyrants were most dangerous when forced to acknowledge impending defeat; she should be cautious. Yet, she was so eager to need such caution, that she threw it aside. She tasted her enemy's pain and savored it with countless years of maniacal laughter held back in the name of good form.  
  
Euphoria erupted from her, head raised to the ceiling, arms squeezed even tighter, bits of color sparkling behind her welded eyes. Time and space stepped aside to properly observe her triumph. But, in the same turn, that emotion ruined thought's endurance, so too did a thought ruin emotion's moment.  
  
*And so the mad scientist has defeated the shape shifter. This must be something like the power he felt over us.  
  
Flinging her eyes open, bending her head into both hands, Washu desperately pushed cackles back into the cauldron. Her eye's watered from the strain, but she could not relent, shamed and grateful to catch herself on the edge of her enemy's world. Her will for and concept of morality began returning home, just in time to be tested again.  
  
She'd offered a barely conscious prayer to anything never to hear the 'original' voice speak again, so instead it roared. If the hiss were subhuman, surely this could only be described as post-human. A gurgling moan torn into a siren by tenor hooks, Seita's fists were going to implode, his jaw was going to detach, and shards of falling sky were going to cut his throat to thinner ribbons.  
  
It faded in half a minute, but the volume carried pain through the other half. Between everything else, Washu's reflexes had surged to the forefront, and she needed to look up at her captive with both hands still over her ears. She knew instantly that he could see her terror, and reflex spoke again, and again in his old voice, releasing her grip and lowering careful digits towards the pocketed unnecessary risk.  
  
"I suppose I should have foreseen this, if atoms cannot escape this prison surely they cannot make room enough for an oblivion opening."  
  
Washu searched desperately for the terrifying fury that had been in his voice, but only found the far greater threat of vanity, of a readying countermove. His hands had become claws at his sides during the roar, but once again they moved elegantly up to form a wedge of fingers beneath his chin.  
  
"I don't really care ^how^, but I'm sure to find out ^why^, as soon as you tell me ^if^...I still look pretty."  
  
A whole lot of glamour; he looked the same part he'd played during introductions. Washu did not answer, however, and just stared back with too many clenched teeth and not enough concentration to speculate why this would make a difference in their standings.  
  
"I'll take that as a 'yes'." In an effortless transition his sharp smile opened wide, shooting ethereal cruelty through his teeth.  
  
"^Gooooood^."  
  
Washu caught his meaning in a cold iron bar through the stomach as a duplicate Seita moved forward through the containment field in the same shedding manner that Ryoko formed her double. It walked forward at its leisure and her privilege, gliding its hands out of the meditative pose and down into its pockets.  
  
"Tell me where to go---I'll tell you what to see. Now, what do we say? Now, who could've known?"  
  
Duplicates of Tenchi, Ryoko, and herself approached, spaced out in word turns, each distinct voice leaning or bending into an imitation of him. Washu stepped back and clutched the small device in her pocket.  
  
"Im-Impossible!" She gasped back another step in retreat from her glaring mirror image.  
  
"Come now professor Hakube, did you really think that ^thought^ traveled on ^atoms^?"  
  
With that the duplicate slowly dispersed into countless colored ribbons, each particle worming through the air and into the floor. Washu starred back at the tarted bit of insanity smiling smugly inside her prison. A combination of emotion and reflex bent her head forward, hair pulled all but out and eyes clenched all but inward. She trembled, trying desperately again not to think of the weight in her pocket.  
  
"Hmmm, not a particularly creative strategy professor; will you make yourself ^deaf^ as well as blind to escape me?" The rasp sounded ready to flick a forked tongue in her ear; knowing that it was an auditory hallucination made it no less vile.  
  
Someone was caressing a church organ in slow contemplative chords, echoing through a lab far larger than her own. It took an instant to recognize one of Kagato's favorite pieces, and less to detect a different, and very un- musical sound in the distance. A little girl sobbing for her mother grew older, then familiar, then Washu slapped her ears so hard that a similar noise festered, almost answered in her throat. She remembered her own prison aboard the Soja and the cries that would permeate it night after night till she prayed for the mobility to cover her ears as they were now. The accident with her lost son had been a bitter thing to recall, but the months that passed before Kagato finally silenced Ryoko's cries were painful enough to be wielded as a weapon.  
  
And so she tried to shield herself. For longer and longer still, Washu cowered full and futile for deafened darkness, terrified to imagine any more illusions beyond these memories. Sobs fought back and pressed down, her logic, her precious logic struggled back to its throne like a desperate infant to a nurse.  
  
*Must---THINK! How?! How can he still do this? Dammit Washu, you can't let him beat you! For the sake of everything don't let him think you've given up! This is^ your^ mind, ^your^ will!  
  
* It's his arrogance---his arrogance that let him get caught. Use it Washu! Defy him and wait for another mistake---he is mortal---he is ^mortal^!  
  
Once again the single line of reason surged her forward, filled her with energy enough to wield worlds...to imprison beings beyond existence. She lowered her hands and raised her eyes with as much dignity as a queen. With all the confidence she could spare she convinced herself that this enduring gesture could stop any future invasions. Seita was sitting cross- legged, the tip of a more relaxed hand arch beneath his lips, blue waters all but level.  
  
"I'm glad to see that didn't take long. Now, before you waste time on another strategy, could you perhaps tell me now---tell me ^why^? Why go to all this trouble?" His voice transition was soft only to stress the question.  
  
Washu crossed her arms again and reformed a shaky version of her professional posture. Hoping that a glimpse of sincerity would simultaneously satisfy him and catch him off guard, she attempted exactly that.  
  
"It's your question that wastes time on what should be obvious. You are a threat, to me, and to the people I care for. For whatever reason: you exploit memories and twist dreams. You violate the mind, Seita.  
  
"You may not have physically harmed anyone here, but one look into those 'pretty eyes' of yours and it's clear that making us doubt our senses is just the beginning.  
  
Washu frowned a little dark sarcasm for her classroom, then a little more at a rising corner on Seita's mouth.  
  
"Go ahead and take this as flattery, but know that, whatever you are, whatever ambition it is that drives you, this power is not a discovery and not a gift. It is a ^mistake^. And I intend to correct it."  
  
A part of her still wanted to mock him with his own speaking style, but she kept a close watch on herself, fiercely determined not to be drawn in again. Their glares locked and stood fast, silent again as they both tried to muffle their own heartbeats. To her surprise, Seita broke the moment, not with a flamboyant or sinister gesture, but with a tired sigh from beneath a hanging head.  
  
"...I try so hard to give you people a different perspective of things, and this is the thanks I get. I may make it look easy, but let me assure you; it takes a good deal of energy to conduct our little sessions, not to mention the ever invaluable and inconsistent spark of creativity."  
  
Mister Misunderstood spoke of passive peaces, but clearly without enough sincerity to make Washu's glare even flinch. He raised his head to see this and crinkled his lips to the side in a favorite grimace of disappointment. The next sigh and almost cynical response was much more believable.  
  
"Ah yes, I suppose that is a little hard to swallow, isn't it? The old 'road to hell paved with good intentions'----it just seems to wind in the same tired circle." Seita crossed his arms and lowered his eyes reflectively. "That self-delusion wore off before it even bore fruit."  
  
Washu tensed as he began rubbing flattened hands together, for warmth, for effect as he put on another layer of seduction.  
  
"I do think you're too wise for that, in fact, I think you're perceptive enough to understand me quite well, even if you don't know it. And herein lies the true motivation."  
  
He offered up a glance just in time to savor her deeper frown.  
  
"Rage as you may against 'threatening projections', your truest violence is reserved for ^unflattering reflections^."  
  
Washu felt pocket lining again while he chuckled characteristically in his own praise. He seemed to be trying to crack her frown wider with his knuckles  
  
"Come now professor, take this opportunity to destroy me---and prove me right! For surely---surely one so powerful could only be afraid of herself." He griped his knees tightly. "Is that it? Do you hesitate to ^destroy me^ for fear that you will ^know me better^?"  
  
The stressed whispers gave way to tiny chuckles, barely human so much as the tiny grunts of a rodent giving birth.  
  
"If not that, then indeed there is a second, still correlated possibility, a near paradox. Have we indeed trapped each other? Am I still alive to satisfy your own fascination, your own ^hunger^ for my power? Do you want me to beg for mercy at your feet, offering up all my secrets in exchange for my miserable life."  
  
He rose and spread himself back down onto his chest, arching his back enough to fit the tip of his prayer beneath his chin. The sinister velvet completely melted into perverse latex.  
  
"Dare we explore one-level-deeper? Would you keep me imprisoned, knowing that I'm sure to find a way to escape? Is there the sadist's shadow in that brilliant mind of yours; the desire to be ^defeated^?!"  
  
Pretty, ecstatic, Seita's mouth and eyes shook wide and ready to burst from the pleasure of so diagnosing the greatest genius in the universe. Washu shook as well, tensing her finger over the equivalent of a trigger, but relaxed it in shock as her prisoner quickly forced some degree of calm back over himself. Wild features were drug back down by unseen chains till at last his face hung solemn. She searched hopefully for signs of exhaustion rather than wait for her curious head to betray her with new consideration for Seita's perception.  
  
Blue eyes rose then drained to pure and empty white. His bloodless smile didn't move, so when his voice whispered so close to her head she naturally mistook it for direct telepathy.  
  
"^None of these answers would surprise me, being as you are such an unethical scientist...and such a sad excuse for a mother^!"  
  
Washu felt the camel's back snap into jagged splinters beneath her. Quickly as a gentleman drawing during a pistols duel, she pointed the small remote directly between Seita's eyes. Neither of them wavered at the generic computer stewardess's announcement, echoing about them amidst the rearrangement and repetition of lights.  
  
"Attention. Atomic containment field will begin compression in 10.864 seconds. Please take precautionary safety measures."  
  
A second button on the remote made a transparent sphere shimmer around Washu's body. It was large enough to contain her adult form, and held her firmly in a levitating position inches off the floor. Still she matched her prisoner's stillness.  
  
"Compression in 5---4---" The countdown halted and the field around Seita began to darken in color, he grinned a little wider for anybody special before his features were obscured in dynamic flashes of warning light.  
  
"Attention. Containment field unstable, probability of collapse-" The tendons in Washu's arm flexed as she repressed the initial button. "--- compression resumed."  
  
She narrowed her eyes on the blurred figure now sitting patiently again in the ultimate prison cell. Consuming emotion allowed for one last unprofessional musing; she hoped that he'd receive his judgment with that smug smile intact.  
  
The containment field wavered like pieces of sheet metal with sounds of hot grease on static rather than soothing thunder. Washu closed her eyes with real serenity.  
  
***  
  
The lighthawk wings had carried Tenchi high above the treetops, searching for his house, the lake, even a plume of smoke to lead the way home. In frustration he'd started flying in random directions, but this just made him feel more lost and more foolish for the time wasted trying to get back to the home base area Seita had left him in. Eventually, after deciding that developed countries like his shouldn't still have so much wilderness, he threw himself in the lucky direction of a familiar-looking mountain range.  
  
Now, as he burst inside, he nearly tumbled forward as he tried to support himself on the front door handle. With the Jurain garments faded he could feel again how exhausting it could be to stress himself to wit ends of the universe. Barely held back from the brink of gasps for air and fear, he listened and listened closer in the hideous silence. His instinct to call out swelled painfully in his lungs, but he could only S.O.S in an impotent exhale.  
  
More thoughts of Seita; Tenchi didn't need any more reasons to dash forward again. Veering into the living room for as good a reason as wasn't needed, he balked still at the spark of Ryoko's energy sword combined with the hum of Aeka's force shield. The suddenness of it readied him for another lighthawk wing in the moment before he saw their faces.  
  
They quivered, stoic and pitiful, stringing out their last thread of will to defy an impossible adversary. Ryoko spoke first, angling her sword forward as menacingly as possible. A child could have smelled her fear, Tenchi thought, but listened intensely.  
  
"Is that you, Seita?"  
  
The pain he'd felt during the impersonation returned, corkscrewed into him, and swelled. With the greatest of clarity came the depth of failure; he'd been oblivious while something unspeakable violated the very minds of the women, the family he had sworn to protect. The agony swell, the forced mistrust of the face they'd pledged their hearts to, it was all caused by his inability to recognize a surreal threat.  
  
Unworthy, he continued to beg strength of himself, refused to consider asking them the same question. All he could do was drop his arms in despair and bitterly hope that their tears were true.  
  
Ryoko lowered her sword and let it dissipate, Aeka followed suit, taking a step forward. They each crept towards him, hating themselves for each moment of doubt trying to pull them back into a defense. By the time they were close enough to touch him their faces were equally lined with tiny rivers. The sound of their timid breaths was enough to keep Tenchi's blinks short. His one chance at redemption shone through their mire and lifted his arms out, offering them all he could.  
  
***  
  
The wreckage of Washu's lab piled up with so much material that it might as well have been the welded pieces of a chaotic sculpture. Throughout the process of dragging herself from beneath a large conduit tube she was the only one to budge, and squish, and crack, and grunt but mostly whimper. There were some lighter pieces of debris that crumbled and avalanched beneath her blackened hands and tangled in her hair. She crawled upward through a thistle of wires toward what looked like firelight glare.  
  
Emerging at a stile top, Washu rested her chin on her forearms and looked about at the devastation. Some metal garbage transport truck had been disemboweled with a flamethrower to dump its guts over her lab. Fossil fuel yards had looked more promising, and indeed parts of this one were still on fire. Little by little her eyes adjusted to the dim light and began to recognize various components, each one to some degree severed, dented or charred beyond repair. She reached out for a piece of thin piping and tried to pull herself toward what looked like a patch of floor but what was probably the flat surface of some other destroyed component. This motion screamed out any argument that her left leg and right ankle were not broken. The following motion to look back on them similarly reminded her that she had, conservatively, one cracked rib.  
  
With a glazed gaze around and a regretful breath of the putrid rubber fires, Washu smiled weakly to herself.  
  
*The carbon converters must have gone before the main reactors, must be why everything was trashed in a fireball instead of being completely vaporized.  
  
Washu pulled herself along what might have been an easier path toward a smaller fire.  
  
*Lucky me. They must not have been punctured, though they could start to leak any minute now.  
  
Another cough and she collapsed her head onto her folded forearms. The pain there was catching up with the rest of her body in good time. When she opened her eyes she could barely make out a shape, far to her left. It looked like a huge melting candy bar made from Alpha quality metal. It looked like a part of the containment field.  
  
She stared, listened to arch's of electricity starting new fires, and didn't feel too disappointed. After a few minutes of nothing she let herself chuckle no matter how much it hurt. A wet cough worked its way up and out her throat. She didn't bother to check the color of what she spat out, but did wipe it off her chin and did notice the relative size of her trembling hand-cloth.  
  
*I guess the internal power source that kept me little used itself up to keep me from being crushed.  
  
She tried to move again and her leg tried to secede.  
  
*Completely.  
  
Her eyes softened and began to water at the painfully light feeling in her skull. The sound of her voice was drab, but added ringing ears to the list of ailments.  
  
"Ah well, guess I can't really play innocent anymore, can I?"  
  
The fire nearest to her cracked and sizzled out. In the distance some lose wreckage fell in on itself. Washu felt her eyes growing heavy then weightless for a new sound just behind her. She lifted herself up on both hands, then one arm, then both elbows. A bending and scraping weight pressed itself into the lighter wreckage, then pressed in again. Two nearly identical noises now, slowly working their way up to her feet then separating, one settling on each side of her hips.  
  
***  
  
He could not tell who collided with him first, as the second was less than a second behind. Both women clutched his chest with every breath of life, yet they were still somehow too frail to do more than scratch him. In proper balance he wrapped his arms around them and squeezed with all his strength. His head fell in surrender, landing between the two conflicted yet equally soft patches of hair. They clutched tighter and he shook his head in shame, letting the motion evolve into a nuzzle, a touch of how precious they were. Two muffled sobs died mid birth before one managed to crawl out of his throat.  
  
"I'm sorry. I'm ^so^ ^sorry^!"  
  
They commiserated silently for long enough to feel the cramps in their positions, however, it was the part of Tenchi that rose above pain that broke the soothing embrace. They looked at him at first in desperation, frail enough to share him so long as it meant not letting go, delusional enough for another moment.  
  
The understanding between them chose another opportune time to assert itself. Each stepped back, hands crossed before their waists. Aeka lowered her head and began to speak, in a monotone characteristic of a person still confronting trauma. Ryoko's head just kept sinking farther away from Tenchi's eyes.  
  
"He---Seita, I mean---Washu; she stopped him somehow, with a new device. I believe she has him trapped in her lab now."  
  
Tenchi gaped at a new battle for the right questions, this time looking at Ryoko to fill them in. She confined her face to the floor and her breath to a shudder.  
  
"What should we do now, Lord Tenchi?"  
  
Aeka looked away from the closet door. Tenchi felt something weaken in the face of so much longing, at the sound of something ever fragile for being broken more than once. His first instinct asked that they all pray, however, memories of what had answered the past two times he'd done so--- sincerely, they came back like rising bile. He held his arms and tested a rebuilding seriousness on the closet door.  
  
"We wait."  
  
***  
  
Washu never took her eyes away from the floor in front of her, but she could see Seita perfectly, standing over her as she crawled through the ruins of her lab. She ignored the pain and kept both elbows strong.  
  
Tense hands, fingers slightly parted, spread over either side of her vision. They overlapped at the tips and moved slowly to cover her eyes, she willed herself not flinch as they divided again a millimeter from her nose and caressed along both cheeks with all the delicate patience of a curious blind man. His thumbs resting against her head, his middle fingers pulled strands of hair back over her ears.  
  
Seita's flesh was cold and smooth like she'd imagined, the envy of a snake for all the power it could hide. A nauseating fear bore its roots through her from the tips of tiny sharpened nails as they traced her jaw line and pressed into her jugular with arrogant restraint. The rubble shifted under his feet as he moved them up, quiet lechery trembled a breath against her ear. For some strange reason she believed that if she imagined a pit of all the unspeakable acts he could do to her he'd feel compelled to think of something else, something unexpected.  
  
"It looks as though you've been keeping secrets as well---'Little' Washu." Steaming venom over twisted fangs frightened the marrow of the stars slightly less than continued silence would have.  
  
She could almost feel the hair behind her ear rising into his nostrils as he filled his lungs with more than should have been able to fit in such a slender frame. Washu had to close her eyes now, he was not just gloating; he was savoring the moment. Whether or not the tactic would have worked; whatever this creature had planned for her she surely couldn't have imagined it without screaming herself mute.  
  
"Though I suppose, if I had this much beauty to offer, I wouldn't let just ^anyone^ see it either." Seita moved his lips closer to her ear, slow breaths hardly obscuring his excitement. Washu's own clenched teeth turned merely melted composure into a shivering steam.  
  
"It's a shame how much reassuring I've had to do here; even if you feel helpless now, I already feel terribly bold just making this much physical contact. Indeed, I had thought our first session to be the last." The hiss had softened slightly into an attempt at perverse seduction. Washu tried in vain to think past fear, to obtain some glance at whether he was being sincere, and to debate whether or not it mattered.  
  
"But my time here grows shorter with each of its rewards; I only wonder which will run out first."  
  
Washu clutched manically at the rubble beneath her hands, considering again some final desperate attack. She heard him step back, and could feel him standing over her again, she tried to judge his position as she reached for a piece of sword-sized pipe.  
  
"Perhaps we'd have had a better chance under ever inverting circumstances, but I still have my masterpiece to offer and-"  
  
Seita cut himself off, apparently considering a sudden inspiration. Washu grasped the pipe tightly, not daring to even move her eyes to check its length. A rising chuckle froze her.  
  
"How ironic that what was once delaying me has now given me more time--- everyone will be waiting patiently in the living room, thinking that you are having your way with me in here, never knowing that all the while I'll be-"  
  
His air wailed to be taken in so coldly. Washu recognized the feeling of white in her knuckles.  
  
"Hmm, yes, oh yes!" He appraised himself with wicked glee. "A perfect analysis; as I leave you for someone else now-" he paused dramatically and Washu felt his breath against her ear again.  
  
"The phrase: ^age before beauty^, it suddenly seems so very fitting!"  
  
Almost bright with pride, his sharpened emptiness lifted and left her with the same untouchable chuckle. The loathsome sensation she instantly recognized as oblivion came and went in a spare moment. Seita's choice of words pieced together in her mind clearly enough to make her choke in renewed terror. She demanded the further advanced pain pilgrimage turn back in the name of dragging herself unburdened. Another motivational line drove her forward again, this time only a word, the simple name of a quiet man.  
  
***  
  
Tea steam billowed out from three separate angles of the living room, one from an idle cup on the center table and the others from tense hand cradles. Ryoko shifted her palms over her knees, studying tiny kimono creases. She looked up at Tenchi then across to Aeka, both engrossed with their own leaves. It was now the fourth time she had to tell herself not to look over at Washu's door. A strange thing to count, she thought, but better than any other distraction from the heavy silence. She'd already lost count of how many times she'd built up and lost the will to speak. When Tenchi took the initiative his low voice filled house.  
  
"Ryoko?"  
  
She had to swallow thickly and stare back to make sure she had actually heard him. Although he didn't look up, she couldn't help replying in as polite a voice as she could manage.  
  
"Yes, Tenchi?"  
  
"Do you-" he began with obvious difficulty. She could not tell if he were about to break something or burst into tears. The vision of him doing both made her bite her lip and clench her fists till he continued.  
  
His renewed attempt at deadpan seriousness was only slightly less unnerving.  
  
"Do you think that Washu will---will really kill him?"  
  
"I don't know." She nearly whispered, head down again, guilty glad for the strands of hair hiding her eyes.  
  
Tenchi's silence brought her to number five. Maybe five and one now that she had to also fight off the urge to listen in on her mother's thoughts, to attempt it anyway.  
  
She found seventy-three folds in the curtains this time. Her ears began to strain, searching through the silence like a ravenous cloud. Wind and insects seemed to wonder what all the fuss was about. She grabbed her tea and took a quick sip just so she might have a sore tongue as a new distraction. By some subconscious need for balance, Aeka set her own cup down on the table. She began in a voice showing Tenchi the proper way to be seriously afraid.  
  
"Tenchi...what is he?"  
  
His face froze with the pressure of a million thoughts. He wouldn't have imagined it was a strange comfort to both of them to hear him speak so much like Yosho, even if his answer seemed an ominous deterrent of any other questions.  
  
"I managed to ask him, and I don't think even he knows."  
  
***  
  
Seita looked at the first step up to Misaki Shrine, letting his focus blur to keep from blinking a little longer. No trance intended, calculations moved perfect circles and parallel lines into his jaw. A similar busy signal poked points into both thumbs till they couldn't hold back the tremble. He closed his eyes and covered nervousness with a long breath let out in a quick jab. Frowning with seriousness, no, not with displeasure, he squinted up an estimation of the ascent; no, distance by step size by leg strength didn't equal good time. Puffing back lean shoulders and puffing up a vivid smile, his thoughts were clear.  
  
*No more plan. No more wait.  
  
A tiny blossom came gliding down on a collision course with the tall man's face. Grin shifted to the better side, he caught it and nearly crushed it in his fist. Neck muscles loosening to better appreciate this prize as each finger opened better than a blossom. He picked up the tiny hors derv with his favorite little nail. He'd enjoy it, the way he'd enjoyed all the other 'natural' beauties Tenchi's home had to offer, more so now by looking down his tiara on the quaint and homey runners up. It should be honored for any kind of admiration.  
  
The light pink offering passed on and back to the wind, freeing itself from Seita's nail. He imagined it moving the same way from a spider's web or a decaying pile of countless other castoffs. This frown took his brow down with it, but no, not displeased, just very serious. The oblivion portal crossed the distance between himself and the last step in one step.  
  
As planned, he would spread his arms out and inhale pungent tree sap, mildewed stone carvings, and sweet incense. As planned, he would stroll into a little paradise, untouched by the acidic and polished urban excretions. Such an apex of purity and tranquility would invigorate him. He squeezed both hands to his sides in curious frustration and sniffed as rapidly as a rodent.  
  
The midday sun was still bright, the tree noise still white, the shrine's courtyard empty, and he frowned again. His heartbeat had quickened, all the pleasant smells were there, but they were not washing over him in a symphony, they came one at a time on assembly line notes. How could they be suddenly so mundane and simultaneously make him so physically tense? He shot his breath through a grounded brow, forcefully spreading both hands, throwing his lungs in wide fishing nets to consume all the ethers of the euphoric soup offered to all other visitors. A strong west wind didn't change anything but his skin texture. He sucked his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He bit down and waited for an attack. Three leaves and another blossom passed through him like bullets through a ghost.  
  
More wind shook the trees then caught and tried in vain to tangle Seita's perfect hair, the flag kept claiming in his name. Squinting, nearly sneering the distance to Katshuhito's office, he took one, two, three, calculating steps forward and stopped for another look around, this time moving his head till an inspirational grin clenched violently back into his neck. The wind kept pouring over him, he now imagined, like a locked chain rattling on a gate. He sucked it in through his teeth till his lips crinkled. Old stones shone in the sun, he now envisioned, like useless old men, their helpless indignity trembling to replace his own nervousness.  
  
"There is emotional residue here," Seita churned a whisper in his throat.  
  
Rolling one shoulder back at a time, shedding a robe. The dark lavender business suit swirled on like a glove while a black tie slinked out of a ticket machine. Clear gel on invisible hands pulled his hair into a tight ponytail.  
  
"A lot of it." The judgment strolled him forward, hands held confidently behind his back. Yosho's office starred back unflinching.  
  
"Making peace with lost relatives."  
  
Not a trance, too sharp for that, but his voice did slither out for himself and anything special lurking in the empty quiet.  
  
"Asking spirits to watch over their children."  
  
Icicle blue thinned enough to drip malice into the cracks round the office door. He took ever more leisurely steps, but hissed with such enthusiasm that he sounded less like a demon and more like a decrepit basilisk.  
  
"^Making peace^...^asking spirits^."  
  
An even stronger wind dissipated his hair tie and blasted platinum forward. Old wood groaned and whistled under the scratch of dead leaves. He stopped and opened his mouth enough to let it quiver, lifting his chin to sensually closed eyes. Ready to shadow the angles in white cake makeup, the song stopped on a haunted recite and a mistrusting dimple grin.  
  
"These energies bend around me. Revulsion."  
  
"Adversity.  
  
"They'll forget their heavens as I have them forsake their soils. And they know it."  
  
Reopened softer, his eyes wavered, unaffected by a strand of hair blown into his mouth. It slid out along his bottom lip. The wind was still blowing when the locks retied themselves in one and sat perfect, still.  
  
"Acting us past the heroes.  
  
"Painting us past the gods.  
  
"Thinking us past the stars...and now they know it."  
  
His shoe settled onto the first step with an audible 'tap'.  
  
"And now it feels like my very presence here is a desecration."  
  
The final steps up to the door pressed his lips together roughly and puckered them back out like a teasing whore; Seita spoke with delaying excitement, a first time customer holding tight to their venom in glorious, merciless refinement.  
  
"My vision---soon---avenged.  
  
"My vision---soon---reborn.  
  
"The ghost---of madness---ascends.  
  
"Oblivion's---oath---be ^sworn^!"  
  
Another impromptu verse shook him giddy and vile, he clenched it quiet and stopped at knocking distance. He could smell the tea brewing inside, told himself he would hear the old man's breath were it not for his own, told himself the grandest projected entrance would still not be enough.  
  
A fresh cloud of leaves rained down across the courtyard. Seita smiled a moment's peace and nearly thought aloud.  
  
*It almost sounds like water...  
  
What might have been a burst of laughter strained to snap through his neck.  
  
He refocused it on what he hoped was the sturdiest part of the door, and kicked for real. 


	3. Verse Eight is Martyr

Standard Disclaimer:  
  
I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.  
  
Standard Advertisement:  
  
I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.  
  
Standard Procedure:  
  
Speak when spoken to.  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Eight is Martyr-  
  
-Part 1-  
  
Names of ambition refresh---to know and to be known.  
  
Old wraths of identity---cannot leave it alone.  
  
-ZJS  
  
A modern shadow rode in on new light as it poured into the modest office. Dust from unreachable or unrecognized crevices escaped for a few glorious moments before cowering back into the floorboards. Stiff and formal steps moaned and crackled over the fallen door as it lay like an imploded drawbridge. Calmly or dutifully guarding the retreat of citizens and kings, spiritual guidance and his bokken faced invasion.  
  
Signs of age directed nothing away from the rigid strength of Katshuhito's position; the wooden sword angled forward, late afternoon catching its coat of fine sealant. And though he kept the rest of his body vertical in the shadow, it was clearly ready for any stance.  
  
Entertaining a moment of curiosity, the intrusion squinted for the source of the spectacle glare. Not wasting any eye contact, he smoothed back a hair strand, faded on a pair of bullet sunglasses, and impossibly sharpened his grin. Still silent and statuesque, the priest watched cold confidence try to break through the next barrier with less overt force.  
  
Finger-painted, flex at the sides, crack in the center, once then again; the ritualistic flutter-snaps received no response. He glanced down to watch his thumb test its opposite's sharpness. While making sure polish still matched fabric he heard a heavy footstep something cut through a trace incense of smoke.  
  
Nobuyuki would have envied his father-in-law's natural understanding of geometrics; the bokken was positioned diagonally between pre-slice and mid-slice, the point-forming angle at the tip was exactly parallel to Seita's throat.  
  
Although the position required Katshuhito to bend a bit and make the height difference more than slight, he let the glare fall from his glasses and caught the sapphire oozing down the length of his weapon.  
  
Holding his sunglasses at a dainty perpendicular to his grin, Seita let them fall a moment later. They met the floor unwatched and unheard as he folded both arms across the silent chuckle shaking in his chest.  
  
While the one would not show fear, the other could not hide excitement, even with a thousand layers of cheap velvet around his tongue.  
  
"What a shame," shamelessness sighed, "I was so happy to finally have somebody awaiting and even anticipating my arrival, yet, here I am, still greeted with the same misplaced hospitality."  
  
Extra teeth fought to burst forth ahead of schedule as he watched Katshuhito's slow precision return the previous stance, unofficially demoting him from the ranks of imposing model to finely crafted chess figure. The piece in question turned with tranquil dignity and stepped over to a rack on the far wall.  
  
"For a moment I wondered if you thought a splinter suited me better than a beheading, but I still don't see any purpose to that little display.  
  
"Not surprising." The bokken went back on its proper pegs with cold delicacy.  
  
"Oh?" Such genuine surprise tried to look honest with only half- mocked interest.  
  
"It took you off guard."  
  
Turning on his heels, and then bending a frown where Seita expected him to formally bow, Katshuhito folded his own arms lower and more neatly into his sleeves. Judgment came sure and steady.  
  
"I heard your footsteps in the yard, slow and vain, like the number of Kendo graduates who have come here to feed their pride rather than test their skill. I only needed a stick to know that you are not a god, or even a demon."  
  
Old glass caught the light again one after the other in reflection of bloodless paint drawing into shadow. Nonchalance and shiny boots stepped off the fallen door to stand in front of the main desk, to look down where others had knelt.  
  
"My hospitality hasn't been misplaced," Katshuhito continued, making Seita glanced over to draw a smile from the priest's barely wavering calm, "it has been lost."  
  
The elder frowned deeper at the chuckle that glanced away, and walked behind his desk to keep the battle in the open. They matched glares again all through the smug-slow migration of Seita's hands to the small of his back.  
  
"Indeed, something tells me 'knocking' wouldn't have changed that."  
  
"You can make all the grand presentations you want, I can no longer argue my better intuition."  
  
"But you must, unless you want your 'intuition' to become cold clairvoyance." The challenging intellect watched the home player for a response before congratulating himself with a follow up of condescending nostalgia.  
  
"Ah, I'm going to miss our little exchanges---a good thing your 'better intuition' wasn't more ambitious, they might never have happened."  
  
"You will have plenty of time to reflect on them." Katshuhito answered with tempered steel, opening a side drawer and removing the Tenchi- ken. He held it with both hands, intensely thinking over its intricate design.  
  
"Seita, has anyone told you yet how Ryoko got here?"  
  
Taking a moment to look up for a response, then wishing he'd taken none or kept them all, he saw Seita's face angle down like a cauldron ready for a poison-pour. Neck tendons strangled the beauty from deep eyes and sprayed it over pristine teeth in a colorless shine.  
  
"Let's not over-step."  
  
Whatever invisible smoke was stinging his eyes and begging a cough reflex, Katshuhito was certain it came from this man's throat.  
  
"Let's not over-look," Seita closed one eye for focus and caressed the shrine keeper's not very distant image with a little nail, "the daring prince, who saved his world---" the words softened his lips and twirled his tongue around his point. He watched the dance then looked to seduce the daring prince to join.  
  
"Twice."  
  
The tip of his favored décor slowly pressed into the tip of his favored weapon.  
  
Enclosing darkness made Katshuhito blink and open his eyes as tight as possible. He bit his tongue as an old remedy to hold onto consciousness, but the world stayed black just the same. Shaking his head against the imposed illusion hardly seemed more promising. When he heard Seita's voice again it sounded impossibly plain, no wrappings of velvet, no coats of acid, a human voice, calm despite an underlying air of consuming bitterness.  
  
"Open your eyes, Prince Yosho."  
  
---  
  
Jurai stretched out before him more beautiful than a biased memory. Green within green, blue over silver, clean sunlight filled it all with a contented smile, a healthy hand nestling into a silk pocket. Enormous trees dusted leaves onto sparkling rivers and sleeker than marble wood bridges. A cloud moved and a bed of wildflowers caught him with his mouth open, laughing in every shade of pink.  
  
He nearly ducked at the flock of birds passing low overhead. Their collective chirrups reminded him of how much he still missed and were answered by ceremonial trumpets on the distant horizon. A moment of belief that he'd been transported back, then a definite fear for how wonderful it felt. The delusion was replaced with little relief by the unaltered voice; still so strange for lacking any of the usual affectations. When he turned to see Seita leaning against a mammoth tree trunk, unchanged flamboyant attire dismissed any confusion.  
  
"This is how we remember Jurai, not how it exists today." He explained, stone-smoothing his stare to match his monotone. The prince's eyes wandered about reflexively, still unable to hide any awe.  
  
"However, despite an ever swelling population, its 'natural charm' has changed very little."  
  
Seita leaned away from the tree and took an unthreatening step forward, trying to meet his audience's gaze rather than draw it up to him.  
  
"I'm creating this complete sensory illusion at a significant expense of energy, and I've already exerted plenty to keep your family from interrupting us." For once he ignored the angering frown and regarded the sword still clutched in Yosho's right hand. "So lets not waste it with any hero-vengeful interruptions. If I speak in riddles, it is not to compliment your ability to solve them, or rate them, it is only to further inspire me towards a fitting presentation."  
  
The former prince watched the new enemy walk up alongside him like a trusted guide.  
  
"Now," tranquility breathed out to make room for ambition, "take in what your home was, so that you can better appreciate what it could have been."  
  
Yosho watched Seita walk to the edge of their hilltop, the cruelty rising in his voice again, obvious and ominous through tense movements. Still shaken himself by the change in scenery, he hesitantly followed, standing a meter back from the former guest's right.  
  
"Just look at it---I've been privileged enough to see so many worlds, and still this one inspires me. No surprise that you would retire to a quaint imitation of it."  
  
His fingers spread emphatically, then closed gentle, then reopened curious. Yosho hardly bothered grasping at how he could still check his nails and thus wasn't concerned where his other hand had pulled the writing quill.  
  
"From my place in oblivion," he reminisced, changing each nail to an organic turquoise with a single tap from the pure white feather, "I would spend years, simply watching over it" he pinched the bottom with his new fingers, pulling up to savor its texture and gradually mold it into a leaf, "considering and reconsidering my place in its history."  
  
Even with the familiar gesture of crushing it next to his ear, Yosho failed to share or appreciate any softening nostalgia. Before he could form a response despite and slightly to spite the request not to interrupt, Seita smiled over his shoulder at the prince's reaction to flight.  
  
Remembering and more so reminded, Yosho pulled his wide eyes up from a tug- of-war with the retreating ground.  
  
*We are not flying. We are not even in motion. We are still standing in my office while this image of Jurai moves around us.  
  
The lush landscape was enveloping, even epic from this vantage point, rapidly transported upon an invisible platform. Yosho kept his focus on the guide, ignoring the instinct to adjust his balance for lack of visual footing and haplessly fighting his normally encouraged urge to absorb the surrounding energies. Contemplating whether Seita wanted to burden or entice him with memories made for a lot of anger and a lack of strategy. The protection of calm would have to carry the burden a little longer. Another flock of birds flew by, nearly swarming them and neatly adding resentful acknowledgement of the skill behind such vivid illusions.  
  
They began to close distance with a large agricultural community. Yosho felt his stomach turn and wished for a motion sickness excuse. Protective instincts concerning the peasantry welled up, atrophied and bitter from centuries of neglect. The streets teamed with activity, each person busy connecting commerce and art and commerce, oblivious to the two figures flying overhead.  
  
Yosho told himself again, more forcefully, that they were not visiting ghosts. But while they sailed up the main street towards the local nobility's estate, his concentration kept returning to what his guide had said.  
  
*'Twice'? What could he have meant? Why show me Jurai as I remember it? Has something changed that Mother failed to tell me about?  
  
*No. Do not doubt. Do not feed him.  
  
He gritted his teeth and glared at Seita's back and perfect-gentle billowing hair, hardly noticing the elaborate arrangement of blossom-trees and post-ivory pillars lining the Duke's private road.  
  
*How could I have been so foolish?! Thinking he was merely using chicanery to soften his transition back to a normal life.  
  
*I knew! He kept dropping subtle hints, waiting for me to confront him, but I just kept telling myself to wait for some real evidence. Weren't those battle scars left around the forest proof enough?  
  
The next sensation really did feel like motion sickness, but it only added to the other unnamable ailments.  
  
*Who else knows?! How many of them has he made too afraid to call him out?  
  
He had to close his eyes for the next pang.  
  
*He's returned without Mihoshi--- and Tenchi, Tenchi hasn't come to the shrine today.  
  
*Washu---she still hasn't come out of her lab.  
  
*Stop. Worry is only distraction and it will only serve whatever psychological attack he's mounting. I have to stay patient, there's a chance they are all even more oblivious to his intentions than I am.  
  
Lifting his eyes resolutely Yosho spread them a little wider to behold the Duke's private garden. He flexed a few toes just to be sure of the new ground even as it conveyed him behind Seita's steady pace. The taller man stepped carelessly through a bed of delicate flowers but the insult in this quickly turned baseless for lack of footprints. Upon closer inspection it seemed he phased through his illusions as effortlessly as anything else.  
  
Yosho reluctantly watched his own form do the same.  
  
"Your highness, you may not want to 'dignify' my illusions, but if roles were reversed I'd consider making it harder to keep this fabrication convincing."  
  
Even though he wore it so smoothly, passive fair play didn't suit him.  
  
"Go on, trample a few orchids. Take that sword and sever a few trees."  
  
Not that Yosho trusted his sensual enticements any differently.  
  
Still, since even a fool would have known to hesitate, he considered it long enough to taste the frustration of being faced with an illusion he could neither trust nor disregard. Still, since only a fool would remain forever on the defensive, he allowed himself an idea and a smile.  
  
"You must not have been watching Jurai as closely as you thought; no Duke would allow his pond to grow this murky." Yosho stated as if he were lecturing Tenchi on sword Technique.  
  
"Hm," Seita considered all the way over a small hill and into a wide meadow, "it's funny you should notice that."  
  
The velvet in his response tightened in knots around Yosho's chest. Before he could thoroughly curse another failed move, he noticed a third party. The Duke's formal attire looked familiar, but the name escaped him. Seita walked past him then turned to face Yosho again. Still the stately man gazed into the garden.  
  
A small start for the sound of tiny feet and the former prince turned to see the rest of the subject running towards them.  
  
"Fah---Father!" The little girl cried out piteously, nearly tripping.  
  
She reminded Yosho, for a painful moment, of his own younger sisters. Her hair was dark like her father's and tied in a single braid that swung with the weight of many large and flashy hair-ties. The distress on her face stole the life beneath her freckles and all the amusement normally found when young girls find a treasure trove of their mother's excess jewelry. She cried out again for attention, but her father continued starring on empty.  
  
Yosho almost bent to comfort her when she neared him, but was ignored even before he could reconsider. The girl finally tripped and fell to her knees behind her father, whining sharply for a moment before calling out again, still too upset to stand up again.  
  
"Father! What's going on? Why are all the servants leaving? Everything's getting dirty and---and I'm ^hungry^!" She had clearly never known want, but the distress in her voice implied she almost never came running to her father with problems.  
  
Yosho looked back at the nobleman, instantly unnerved that any father could keep his back turned to his daughter's cries. He frowned less than unamused back at Seita but only received an imitation-patient smile and anxious eyes gesturing back towards the exchange.  
  
"Father?" Her voice now hushed from the fear any child might know if suddenly ignored by a parent.  
  
"Commoners are not to be trusted, the help will all be replaced in good time."  
  
The stern reply came with businesslike formality, and the Duke still refused to meet his daughter's tearing eyes.  
  
"But---but father." She sniffled.  
  
The Duke whirled around violently and Yosho readied himself for an attack on either himself or the girl.  
  
"The kitchen is on the first floor of the east tower, now leave me in peace!"  
  
His daughter cringed at the pain of her father's roar, eyes wide with terror. Yosho tried to look back over with disgust rather than rage.  
  
"If you wanted to show me callous parenting we could have stayed on earth." He leveled off his voice, all the while forcing himself not to stand between the two figures. Though he'd told himself the scene was false more than enough times, it affected him more than any staged production might have.  
  
Seita's hands, previously holding his biceps, met at the wrist to frill each finger out beneath his chin. He dropped his head and jerked it back up, mouth wide and eyes rolled back in a hellish wane. The laugh that he emitted was not enhanced, but it must have torn at his throat to make it. Yosho wanted to scream for silence as the cacophonous mixture of wheezes and roars wretched up towards the sky. Loath to endure any more of the exaggerated non-answer, he looked back at the Duke, hoping to see him transform into some sort of ogre to finally bring the nightmare to a head. Unfortunately both characters were still starring at each other, matching fear with frustration.  
  
"You---simple---old---FOOL!" A sharp ethereal hiss pierced the air for attention, but did not affect any aspect of the artificial environment. "Have you been ignoring everything I've said?! Do you think that I went to all this trouble just to---to make you doubt the parenting skills of your devoted subjects?!"  
  
Grotesque laughter shook the guide again and tightened Yosho's grip on the sword, still waiting anxiously in his pocket. A thick purple smoke made it clear that this laugh was an illusion as it consumed and compacted the slender form. Like a snake stuck devouring its prey backwards, soon all that remained was a cloud ribbon slithering towards the prince with a Seita mask. Yosho did not flinch at the ghostly reformation, almost glad to consider blowing on it to see if it dissipated.  
  
"Pay close attention, Yosho of Jurai."  
  
The specter swam a taunting circle around his head, putting a temporary purple filter over the garden. Yosho managed a bit of optimism that at least this gaseous transformation did not emit an odor. He watched Seita move towards the Duke, weaving like a dragon till the nobleman's head was similarly encircled.  
  
Every orbit hissed out a little more.  
  
"Bring the callous---to a boil---the boil to a scar---the scar to a ^mouth^.  
  
The trails of vapor cast off at every turn began floating inward rather than outward, dissipating as they wormed their way into the nobleman's ears and eyes. Yosho's face tightened as he watched these trails form a chant.  
  
'And---how.' 'But---why.'  
  
'The trees---watch' 'The waters---LIE!'  
  
"A suggestion whose source is unknown," Seita matched a seductive waft to his form, "must surely come from with-in...or from ^on-high^."  
  
Suggestions stopped with a 'how'. The clean face clouded a little, smiled at Yosho, and spoke on with more of a hiss.  
  
"From within oblivion I can know, but I cannot influence. And once out in existence it is very draining to twist perceptions.  
  
"Luckily, even the strongest wills can be redirected with only a few choice illusions."  
  
"What should I say to him, my Lord?" Seita asked with playful malice. "Should I tell him that his darling daughter is really a demon, have him strike her down?"  
  
Yosho remained silent while the ghost continued to swim lazily around the Duke, seeing him smile confidently at his opponent's stubbornness.  
  
"No. Even the cruelest misinformation does not carry the destructive power of uncertainty...of ^helplessness^. The seed of dementia lies in every mind, and indeed the stress of even the most mundane existence can cause it to germinate naturally.  
  
"However, I have learned the path, I have the access. Ryoko and Tenchi were right to fear the little 'vacations' that you are on right now." A chuckle turned the cloud a slightly darker shade.  
  
"Who knew that a tiny aquatic creature held the fate of sanity in one of its simple self defense tactics? Now, through the grace of oblivion, I can wield that power over anyone. Over everyone!"  
  
Seita's voice and form thinned to swirl in a tighter orbit.  
  
"It takes quite an investment, but I can press the buttons. I can pull the strings. I can ^cut^ the wires."  
  
At the drop of a spiked confession, the Duke clutched at his skull and sank to his knees with a trembling moan. His daughter crawled pitifully forward for an explanation. She cried into his hair, torn between her own grab for comfort and her meager attempt to offer it to the fallen Lord. Yosho tried to stare at the ghost now swirling a wider orbit over the both of them, but the emotional scene kept drawing him in. It was an unusual thing to be telling himself to favor his anger over his sympathy, but the Duke's eventual response made it possible.  
  
With a timid movement the nobleman withdrew from his daughter's arms, looking down at his hands then back up at her with a competitively fearful expression.  
  
"Who---who are you, what are you doing in my garden?" He whimpered loudly.  
  
Yosho watched through the first shivers of physical weakness; the little girl slowly shook her head in disbelief while her father proceeded to look around him like a frightened animal, mumbling something about the trees needing shade and the fish needing water.  
  
"So, how many orphanages do you think I could fill?" Seita broke his circle and swam back, speaking in his velvety tone again as he slowly maneuvered himself around his audience.  
  
"How many children might further their abandonment, never knowing that their own anguish only deepens my pit? How many nobles might I be able to turn against each other?" Yosho watched clouded blue eyes close to savor the idea and felt his demeanor break in icy defense of his people.  
  
"Jurains---are not so weak of spirit."  
  
His guide continued slow encirclement in silence, preparing, Yosho assumed, the proper cruel chuckle or clever response to belittle his faith. When he did speak, however, he matched every icicle and made an unexpected defensive move.  
  
"And ^I^---am not so narrow of purpose."  
  
Both faces hardened as Yosho noticed, with little relief, that the father and daughter were fading away. The orbit ceased, leaving the smoky glare to hovered on level with the old spectacle gleam.  
  
"Even if I were to help myself to some of that water you guard so heavily, as I will when I will, it would only hide the inevitable fact that my body still ages every moment I remain outside oblivion. In a thousand years I could, maybe, affect half of Jurai's aristocracy---and there is always someone willing to fill an empty throne."  
  
Bitterness went into emphasis by thickening and spreading the body of smoke like a storm cloud. Yosho commanded himself not flinch as he was thoroughly enveloped. He readied his mind for any sign of intrusion, convinced that he could meet and drive away any would-be inner attack. When Seita spoke again, it seemed to be into his ears, but still he focused will upon the principles of peace and discipline that could overcome any evil.  
  
"For every life I destroyed, another would be rebuilt. As much pain as madmen can cause, there would only be unknown yet still 'external' circumstances. No revolutionaries, no martyrs---just ^victims^."  
  
The smoke dissipated completely from the garden onto a high and elaborate balcony facing a picturesque sunset. A tall man dressed in the white and green robes of a Great Tree guardian leaned over the far left corner railing. His hair was Seita's color and length, but was tied in traditional Jurai fashion. Yosho assumed this to be the latest disguise or victim, but could not bring himself to ask which would be the most horrible, hence the most likely.  
  
This type of guard was the closest thing to a priest the Jurai culture had, never more than a handful appointed at a time to stay closest to Tsunami's tree, each expected to be more educated and virtuous than almost any nobleman. More protective instincts burned stone in Yosho's mind, and he ground his teeth till they hurt, till they went numb, till he relaxed enough to hurt again.  
  
He walked over to the right corner railing and improved on the contemplative pose. The sixth guest confirmed the first guess with the drop of a silk handkerchief.  
  
"Finally allowing yourself to enjoy the view?"  
  
Hologram aging thickened around Yosho's eyes as he looked away from the sunset to the relatively plain trees below.  
  
"Any guesses yet at what we're here for?"  
  
Wind blew silence into the priest's hair.  
  
"Then I shall have to elaborate." Seita breathed deeply, still showing excitement by further suppressing it.  
  
"If I were to simply go about, one by one, sending important Jurains to the asylum, I would only leave unfortunates, and unfortunates are remembered mostly for the sake of remembering, for making the 'hardly fortunate' seem 'lucky enough'."  
  
It might have been violent fantasies that softened Seita's voice yet managed to further focus his thoughts.  
  
"What business do we have here then? How shall I start my talents towards the most meaningful ends?"  
  
Yosho heard him rise from his leaning position and did the same, readying himself to meet those eyes again. Seita, however, remained transfixed on the last remaining auras of sunlight, speaking again to finally hear himself express such thoroughly examined ideas.  
  
A wine goblet former like an inverted icicle in the speaker's hand, already held out to toast the sky. Now inadvertently watching the sunset through the glass, Yosho noticed movement in the patch of colors directly behind it. Cup like a cookie cutter, Seita pulled it back full to the brim with cloud.  
  
"The most significant change in sentient beings, thus far, has been the transition from struggling with their environment---to struggling with their design." He lifted his glass to contemplate the swirling concoction of bruised specters and melon juice.  
  
"This is most prevalent in 'advanced' cultures like Jurai, where the differences between 'defeat', and 'failure' become most pronounced."  
  
Seita turned his head, haunting his words with a stirring glare over a gently rotating beverage.  
  
"Anyone can steal or withhold life, but who can cause it to be ^rejected^? Whatever grandiose manner I might have used to destroy your world, it would not have carried a fraction of the weight...as Jurai destroying itself."  
  
Yosho bit the hesitation from his tongue for what he believed was the best yet opening to attack Seita's confidence. He laughed, he laughed loud and deep and as mockingly as he knew how.  
  
"^That^ was your plan! All this just to justify some ridiculous notion that you could make the empire perish in a mass suicide?"  
  
Yosho redirected his anger into another burst of cruelly belittling laughter.  
  
"And you claim to know so much about my people. HA! For eons we have taken better care of our depressed and withdrawn than anyone in the galaxy, and I doubt this has changed since my time away."  
  
With hands crossed behind his back, and a sure expression, Yosho awaited Seita's reply. The guide narrowed his eyes and looked away, leaning back over the rail.  
  
"Thus Our Goddess Tsunami did grant upon her people, the Jurains, a water so like herself, composed of life eternal and just, so that they may know life longest and best. She bid that all children partake of it as they enter adulthood, and bid that it remain within them.  
  
"'May no true Jurain let the water spill by a hand from without or a hand from within.'  
  
"Thus Our Goddess Tsunami did grant upon her people, the Jurains, the water of life, bidding they keep it safe till she called them to return it."  
  
The unaffected voice, with a solemn yet peaceful edge, perfectly mimicked one of the sacred statements that the Great Tree guardians often read to him. Yosho remembered this particular passage well, and could not have quoted more accurately himself. That this sinister being would even know of it was unsettling, but his use of it as a rebuttal returned a few of the missing pieces to the first exposure to Seita and his dimension. A brief needling dizziness gave him a taste of what came after terror.  
  
"As you can see," he drained his glass and crushed it to silent dissipating shards; condescending bitterness returned. "I understand quite well how Jurains value life."  
  
He began to walk towards Yosho, daring him to move, stopping with a hand's width between them, looking down.  
  
"One could even say that they almost embody life, that they are closest to divinity."  
  
Before the audience could turn his sharp breath into a reply, the star sneered and aborted and disgusted his words.  
  
"Believe that 'all life' is divine if you want, and you ^will^. Jurains have long thought on their closeness to this obscure Goddess of yours. They are in a dominant position over nearly all they survey, and there cannot be true order without control, and no control unless inequality is recognized. And what better way to make the most of inequality than a monarchy?"  
  
Seita cleared the foulness from his mouth to smile viciously again, whirling around and away to the far corner of the balcony with only a few wide strides. Impish agility leapt up on the railing and stepped to the wider corners. He turned and looked farther down at his audience, fingers newly arched and teeth still barred into a smile.  
  
"These 'noble' Jurains, so consumed with life, so then consumed with living, so then consumed with themselves," he added a throaty chuckle, "so then consumed ^by^ themselves!"  
  
Something new overflowed into Yosho's focused mind, driving him to search the bottomless eyes for the first time since their conversation in the forest. He'd been so flamboyant with his malicious intent till now that it hadn't seemed necessary.  
  
The task was not unlike reaching into boiling water for a sacred treasure, but the prince forced himself to look. He needed to make sure he was not flattering this trickster too much by even considering that their battle was of more than wills. The newly intensified expression managed to soften curiosity into the elevated man, bringing him down to meet it.  
  
Smoothing makeup began to melt and smear into gray and dirty pink on the path of oversized and invisible tears. Intense blue pools festered into yellow stains, each outshining the apex of a carbuncle. Blonde cascades frizzed and twisted with brown grime. In the process of making himself grotesque rather than alluring, or even frightening, he managed to throw off Yosho's concentration just as the sound of his unaffected voice had. And in knowing this he filled his throat with hot tar and chalk dust.  
  
"Look as closely as you like, loose yourself in full circle allure." He swallowed or wetted his throat. "All my glamour---disfiguring true: their pride into arrogance, their vitality into decadence. And that---is where I would get my hands dirty." He wiggled them beneath his chin in a quick insect-like motion.  
  
"My power would act not as the draining parasite, but as the ^driving muuussseee^."  
  
Bursting ambition pressed the body flat like clay, smooth like glass, reflective like a full-length mirror. Elaborately framed with thick golden twists of flowering vine it hovered at the perfect distance to emphasize the height difference as one walked up behind the other. Yosho only seemed to notice the image of his younger self, dressed in the loose and elegant clothing reserved for important social engagements.  
  
"Shouldn't you know that the most enduring lies come in the form of flattery?"  
  
At this the reflection angled his head upward though the original remained statuesque. It checked its profile then snorted sharply to purge its nostrils. An indignant tongue over teeth roll completed the check for facial imperfections. The reflection did not tense and Yosho did not feel the sensation of Seita's hand's spreading over raised shoulders.  
  
"All my illusions---would be invested in delusions---of splendor---of grandeur."  
  
Once again as pretty as handsome could be, Seita lowered his head and met Yosho's eyes through the mirror. He spoke to match the reflected prince's vanity as the young champion went so far as to extend his arms for stronger admiration. The pair shared a lusty grin as the already fine features began to exaggerate, muscle tone inflating and jaw line thickening till he resembled an absurd plastic satire of the much-envied royal features.  
  
Unexpectedly, Yosho felt the delicate kiss Seita placed on his cheek to melt the projection into a more accurate reflection of the true face behind Misaki shrine. The shock of it added to the initial tingle of adrenaline blown down his back.  
  
"We are, as we are, and we ^are^ what we ^do^. So be young for a while, and let me be your escort." Seita charmed his arm around Yosho's. The opposing glamour of a strict old man held on for dear life.  
  
"So be it," he continued with a sigh, "status and humility are still fashionable at any age."  
  
The reflections shared another cunning smile then traded for a hard stare, unflinching even as one led the other's reflection through the railing.  
  
It had only taken Yosho's helpless blink to transform their balcony view to another royal garden, this one kept in much finer shape and decorated with an elaborate party. All around them were vast tables of rich food and wealthy flowers. Musicians flailed away at lighthearted music just loudly enough to be heard above the surrounding clouds of laughter and boisterous gossip. He'd attended parties and celebrations before, but there did not seem to be any particular theme or event here.  
  
He looked about more closely and realized the elaborate states of dress and even undress many of the guests were presenting and rewarding themselves with. It was odd to see so many nobles gathered in such a small space and behaving so indulgently, yet he quickly realized that many of the attendees were lesser landowners, merchants, and what must have been a thin strip of fabric between a guild of concubines and a mob of prostitutes.  
  
"I would only need to cast a few soft suggestions to the 'right' minds of the right people to inspire a frequency in these kinds of gatherings. Naturally I'd have to do more than polish a few mirrors, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to encourage certain instincts.  
  
"When dreams, when soft whispers mistaken for thoughts, when they combine, why, even the most noble-man can be brought to host a ball to further reward the higher class for all the responsibilities they are burdened with."  
  
Yosho began to view this new vision of a Jurain inhibition funeral with greater disgust as a young woman wearing a lowest cut gown and a tray of sparkling wines approached them. To his surprise, she stopped by the post- humble narrator and exchanged coquette smiles as he took a glass for himself.  
  
She turned to the shrine keeper next, shamelessly holding the tray out to compress an already generous bosom between her arms. He simply stared at her over his glasses, listening to chuckles offered for his rising discomfort.  
  
"I can understand your abstinence from carnal indulgences, just as I can understand your disdain for illusions, but why let a combination of these things work you into such a-"  
  
"What is the point of this?" Yosho interrupted sternly, braking Seita's flamboyant momentum and leaving him with a sharp frown.  
  
"You 'inferred', at least, that you were going to explain yourself, but all you've done so far is continue to show me what you ^think^ you could turn Jurain nobility into."  
  
The wench pouted her lips and lowered her eyes like a child, backing away towards Seita who wrapped his arm around her shoulders consolingly.  
  
"He doesn't understand my dear." The solemn tone was exaggerated as he positioned his glass for her to drink and rested his cheek on her head.  
  
"Isn't it obvious that vanity flourishes and ^festers^ best in these kinds of collectives. People throw parties for the same reason they attend them: to show off."  
  
Seita set down the now drained glass, picked up another, and began to lazily pour it down the woman's dress. When the last drop fell, Yosho recoiled at the sound of fabric being stretched by a pair of swelling breasts. He reflexively and unconvincingly chanted a reminder that they were both still simply standing in his office. The chemical reaction continued to intensify till two mounds of flesh burst out to overtake him.  
  
Everything around him went peachy for half a minute, the single color surrounding his senses. Small relief came when he felt himself being elevated, or the ground was receding again, and saw the night sky as his body inched up and out of the false fertility symbol. The feeling of a boulder rather than a waterbed beneath his feet made him look down in confusion. He was standing upon a masterfully carved stone areola, only part of what appeared to be a gigantic statue of a woman spreading smooth gray thighs to distant city lights. Not at all surprised, he turned to see Seita sitting on the opposite tip like a dock, leaning onto his knees and swinging his legs. The moments dress now consisted of loose silk pants and an unbuttoned silk shirt, both a sports car red identical to his nails, lipstick, and eyeliner.  
  
Yosho thought this outfit suited him much more than anything any Jurain might wear, but, he reconsidered, not so well as the grotesque image he'd become to jeer any search for a different depth in his eyes. But colors aside, the illusionist's tone was becoming less entertained and more consumed. But shallower inside, Yosho's initial question begged and regretted itself again.  
  
*Twice? He said I saved my world twice.  
  
"After all the ways I've exercised my powers to greater understand, and better influence the sentient mind, I'm still enamored with the ease with which I can gain access through the creative drive."  
  
Mid-reflection, the red ribbon stood and posed in the breeze, interrupting the gray bandage's thoughts.  
  
"Jurai provided the perfect setting to mix business with pleasure. You see, I wanted for so long to be an artist, but I always lacked the resources, and, more importantly, the coordination. So, what better way to utilize the nobility's decent into decadence?"  
  
He offered the sinister velvet as much to himself as for his audience to enjoy. He spun on his toes and hugged himself, savoring a cooling breeze. It continued to billow his hair and shirt as he stretched out his arms in a cruel imitation of religious ecstasy.  
  
"I would have helped myself to that water, and then poured out for centuries, living through a perpetuation of compulsive-creative- competition!" Something too loud to escape made him smile very wide and shed replicated sheets of his shirt into the sky like chaos kites.  
  
"The parties would debauch ever further, giving leave to raise art grand enough to make this behemoth look like a paper doll!" His chuckle went wild.  
  
"Yes! Yes indeed! Working my way through all the supple minds of desperately ^bored^ aristocracy---giving them justification for every inspiration, and why not?"  
  
Seita's shirt began to grow, unraveling infinite, crawling around him and into a cocoon. It tightened till it wrung like a towel then unraveled smooth. The single sheet grew again, spiraling down one breast and up the statue's other till it ended and pointed at Yosho. More like wet paint than fabric, then more like a pool than a mark, he watched thick juice ripple.  
  
Both hands raised, Seita elevated himself slowly enough to let the ever-red liquid ooze down and congeal latex into elbow length gloves, a buttoned vest, and a skirt to sweep the underground. He cradled his fingers and felt along his forearms, pulled at the lapels, and smoothed his narrow hips with an approving sway. Even through the wind that tied bombshell hair back and the groans of rubber movement, each knuckle cracked audibly.  
  
"Shouldn't the most unapologetic military power not also be the authority on 'art for art's sake'---for me to for-sake---as I---would forseeeeee!"  
  
Another triumphant bellow struck down an arch of lightning. He began to gesture with every length of himself, a symphony conductor for a better slave driver. Each spectacle struck up from the ground and molded itself like an assembly of soldiers gathering as their lord called them.  
  
"Towering fountains to wastefully renew the beauty of water's own texture." To his left, far enough to keep away the dust and boast their size, white columns of marble twisted towards the heavens with all the grace of swan necks and live wires.  
  
"Magnificent arches and pyramids of glass---centuries spent to exploit all the angles and angels of light!" He clutched the air to his right as lightning planted creation again. A chaos of refracted glares erupted across the land as structures formed themselves from huge quantities of mirrors and windows like multiplying bacteria. A new, more absurd, and even more grotesque crystal imitation sprang up with each pose.  
  
"Func-tion-less funct-tions-best as ^flattery^!" Seita whirled around to face his prince again, literally singing the praise of his vision in a quarter of a fine tenor and a third of a folk croon. He angled his arms with palms up, lean tendons stretching out through tense showmanship. Behind him more bastard brilliances of architecture reached up to the sky, overwhelming to imagine that any sane person would invest such time and energy into their construction.  
  
Yosho kept his astounding revulsion hidden behind old glasses, gripping his arms more tightly as again they both seemed carried on invisible platforms. Buildings continued to swell up around them as they traveled at high speed up the sacred Tsunami River, now surrounded by flamboyant geometry in every conceivable marriage of wood, stone, and metal.  
  
"There would be halls and theaters, galleries overflowing with ELITIST GRAFFETI!" He kept his violent rally going slightly above and ahead of his crowd. He kept his back turned to the Emperor's palace as they approached.  
  
"What wealthy man could resist the call to strike back at his 'boredom' and 'mortality'?" A wrinkle in his lips wanted to spit the words out for good, but he had explanations to chew.  
  
"I've seen it happen on smaller scales throughout the universe, but I, ^I^ would obsess every Jurain noble with a ^war^," Seita inhaled a gasp and exhaled a chuckle, "to create the grandest tribute or challenge to the ^aesthetic^...the addictive and sole ^an-esthetic^ to the apathy born of coddled lives, of jaded power!"  
  
He pulled his hair back for some luxurious and very necessary calm.  
  
"Of course, some nobles would try to speak out against these 'impractical' and even 'over-ambitious' investments---" he smiled malice and spoke reassurance, "they could be quickly and irrevocably persuaded.  
  
"Yet the Jurain economy would soon begin to buckle under the weight of its wantonness. The common people, the peasants, the ^slaves^, all of them would soon feel the sting of the divide between themselves and 'creative' society."  
  
They reached the palace walls and flew up alongside them, setting down again on a high parapet overlooking the once tranquil and bounteous Jurain plains. They were now crowded with elegant waste, each shadowed by wide lakes of sprawling poverty. Seita stepped closer to the ledge and gestured downward with both hands.  
  
"So. Inevitable. Uprising." He stated with cruel confidence.  
  
A raging cacophony grew from beneath them, exploding the volume of a long muted ocean. Yosho walked up to the edge reflexively, knowing too well what he would see.  
  
"Driven to feel like beasts of burden under the yoke of artistic ambition, pleas would turn to demands as they would turn to their highest authority for liberation." Jurai's new soothsayer looked over with barely suppressed elation as earth's oldest priest was caught by every nobleman's nightmare.  
  
Jurain peasants for thousands of miles had gathered into a mob. They surrounded the castle with an amorphous sea of shouting bodies, brandishing banners and fire, held back only by walls built to withstand an army of only slightly larger numbers. Between this spectacle and their vantage point was the elaborate, and now comparatively dignified, speaking platform. The Emperors and their favored ambassadors had used it for eons and for much smaller and more orderly crowds. It was vacant of even the customary guards.  
  
"Wouldn't it be glorious, to see the masses of Jurai brought to such vengeful chaos, simply by the properly nurtured desires of their nobility? I would have to all but reinvent dedication to bring it to this point, but it would only be time---only time before one of the greatest bastions of ^life^ in all ^existence^, was on the edge of implosion." His voice hissed alternately, but did not lose its deadly monotone.  
  
Yosho slowly turned his entire body, a completely unfamiliar acceptance filling him like an inverse meditation, leaving no shadow of pity and not even a seed of regret. He glared at what he didn't know, but what he knew would set out to consume every living thing in the maw of its own savored madness.  
  
"I have seen enough. Flatter your plans, and cower behind whatever ^deranged^ power it is that fuels them, I will not let you leave this shrine."  
  
He took the sword from his pocket and held it at his side. Blue light unsheathed at a downward angle without any semblance of formality or righteousness, ready to sever the honor between an opponent and an enemy.  
  
"Now face me."  
  
Seemingly unaffected, Seita watched the spectacle below for an entire minute before he sensually tested his hair's length of softness. Vain and erotic pleasure smoothed his closed eyes and thin smile. Sparing no gleam or glimmer or glamour of amused superiority, he turned to meet the priest's new challenge.  
  
"At least you've recognized the turning point, the time of approaching climax, the finely orchestrated moment when you would save your world and the countless others indebted to it," air blasted through his teeth between words, "the moment---when I---would ^strike^!"  
  
Yosho leapt forward and thrust with everything down to the last spark, running half the blade through Seita's unmoving neck a moment before it doubled in size. So much Jurai power after so long burned through him, the exertion pains were enough to flash a realization that he couldn't stop the attack if he wanted to.  
  
Regardless, he managed to increase his efforts when he saw empty blue immunity roll back into white cells. The gloves came up alongside his face, sleek red claws gripping at a glamorous mouth stretching into a silent scream. Yosho filled in the sound for them both while every drop of paint and thread of packaging was sucked into the sword like wet paper down a drain.  
  
***  
  
Nobuyuki let his eyes wander and thoughts idle at the stoplight. A lot of engines were doing the same, none of them willing to take any credit for all the stinking noise. Tailored suits, marriageable skirts, and oversized fads nudged over the gutters, waiting for their turns. He could see signs above the thralls but imagined the window mannequins would have their clothes changed by the time another crowd pocket opened up. Still, it wasn't too bad for this time of week.  
  
He looked down at his watch, checked it with the time on the dashboard, and sighed. They'd make it back by dinnertime if they turned around right now before they actually started looking for a parking spot.  
  
A shuffling in the passenger seat pulled over his smiling attention.  
  
Sasami had been playing with her chair's cranks and levers, an economic retro novelty to replace boring automatic-adjust switches. In the coarse of such easy amusement she'd apparently found just the right angle for a nap.  
  
The dreamy goof-grin spread up the side of his face without a hitch, filling up with sweet new voices to call him 'father'. He had to watch her reflection on the window over the masses outside, then he had to apologize under his breath. Not surprisingly, the driver behind him didn't hear it and honked again even as honorable father began moving forward.  
  
It must not have been the noise, because the little princess had been a truly sound sleeper up till now. Something, however, made her turn over and snuggle tighter into the cushions, wrinkling her nose and trembling her lip. Honorable driver switched between her and the road for a couple blocks.  
  
"^Tokimi^. ^Don't^..."  
  
The words haunted between a groan and a whisper, goose-bumped Nobuyuki flesh, and almost fender-bent his van. He held out his hand reflexively to keep Sasami from jerking too hard in her seat belt. To his surprise she ignored the jolt and his touch, cradling further into herself.  
  
A few more moments of quiet tension inside the van and the noise outside faded to white, leaving a tighter silence to grip the steering wheel.  
  
Sasami sprang up out of consciousness with a loud gasp. Nobuyuki hit his head and put his foot back down on the brake in time.  
  
"It's, ^owww^, er, it's okay little Sasami, you were just having a nightmare." He reassured her and rubbed his skull.  
  
After a few more long breaths and a guilty wipe of sweat, she dared to look over.  
  
"S-Sorry."  
  
"For what," he smiled kindly, "you didn't do anything wrong."  
  
She barely finished a weak smile before she looked away, dreaming again out the window.  
  
Nobuyuki let the new silence tense for another block and cleared his throat.  
  
"Well, um, at least now you can help me look for a parking spot."  
  
She must not have heard him.  
  
When they eventually found a parking structure without a 'full' sign he tried again at just making conversation.  
  
"So, who's Tokimi? An imaginary friend of yours?"  
  
Sasami blinked slow, and long before she could show any surprise. Noboyuki was hopeful when she looked away from the window, till she looked at her lap.  
  
*Brilliant 'Dad' now you've made her feel immature. Guess it's obvious where poor Tenchi ^does^ get his charm from.  
  
When his apologetic look was ready he offered it over, making sure this time that they were already parked first. It was rejected and replaced with a lighthearted, almost excessively naïve shrug.  
  
"Oh," Sasami giggled, "I don't know; it was just a dream."  
  
Nobuyuki chuckled and sighed with relief.  
  
"Okay."  
  
After a quick glasses check, The Breadwinner hopped out of the Misaki Mobile with eager-to-shop heroism.  
  
The Second Princess stayed inside for a moment, mumbling into her novelty purse.  
  
"^Don't give in^."  
  
***  
  
The master key retired itself to permit the master enough space for an exhausted moan and a collapse to his knees. It took him a long succession of heavy breaths to realize that he could still hear a sea of shouting Jurains. He looked around the empty parapet, desperate for the surroundings to at least resemble his office again.  
  
"^Age, before beauty^." A dozen voices surrounded him in whispers of vapor.  
  
Yosho didn't bother to look around, or even clutch at the words seeping directly into his head; he followed his instincts down to the sword.  
  
"Our young professor relearned quickly that restraining what I am only encourages what I do; does our old priest have the finishing-faith she did not?"  
  
He gripped the hilt so tightly that it shook in his hands. Two spherical red gems, and one white marble reflected the gleam of panic. Raspy chuckles pressed sand into raw skin.  
  
"What concerns you more, how to do it, or how to ^justify^ it?"  
  
The mob's fury began to rise again.  
  
"Hmmm," the sword pondered overtly, "I wonder what the prince would have done, that Yosho I knew seven centuries ago? How did ^he^ make important decisions?"  
  
The illusion of sinking twisted his stomach even more than the illusion of flight, but soon after his eyes passed the floor he found himself once again on level ground, kneeling with more dizziness and less dignity than his younger self. A few quick glances turned confusion back into horror; he'd never been so vain as too ask what he looked like while praying at the base of Tsunami, but apparently someone had known.  
  
A surrounding network of platforms branched and rooted out to hold the saplings grown from The Great Tree. In the presence of royalty a few of the larger ones ricocheted random beams of every-colored light off their nurturing moats and into the sky-ceiling. Try as the future ships did to get in on the conversation, the towering original remained still and silent. When the beams ceased, Yosho looked up at the idol he'd spent as much personal time with as any family member. The sacred tree of Jurai, vessel of their Goddess, more glorious now than he could have remembered, and so he forgot the image of himself while he respectfully maneuvered into a more comfortable position.  
  
"This is how you were." Seita's velvet came directly from the hilt, clear and calm.  
  
At the first sound, Yosho simply gripped the source tight again and rose. He tore his eyes painfully away from Tsunami and back to the back of his younger self, taking care not to even think about his hand.  
  
"It's always ironically inspiring---to watch people grasp at inspiration by humbling themselves, or throwing their thoughts aside."  
  
The muffled roar of the mob at the other end of the palace continued to filter through like an ominous static. Yosho's younger self sighed heavily and lowered his head a little more.  
  
"She never really answered any of your questions, did she?" Gentle jeering filled Yosho with mixed nostalgia, but the priest reasserted his focused expression.  
  
"But you wanted her to, as much as you treasured the revelations you'd come to by 'praying', what you yearned for most of all was ^actual contact^. You told yourself that she preferred to work indirectly, but you knew the ancient texts describing her will were written from the same 'intuition' you waited for."  
  
The sigh carried more amusement than a chuckle  
  
"And waited for."  
  
Yosho remembered so many of the tears he'd dropped at her roots, remembered cursing as a boy. What good was it to have special access to The Great Tree if all it did was stand there?  
  
"As your father argued with his advisors, reorganizing misplaced trust in the nobles, you would most surely be locked away in here---with your third mother.  
  
"The people feared the king, but they respected you, thus it would have been 'your job' to either deter or ignite a revolution."  
  
Another chuckle was almost too soft to hear, and Yosho thought he felt the hilt vibrate. He looked back at his younger self, saw him face down with palms up, faintly slurring distress.  
  
"Please Tsunami, the people, your children, I have failed to keep them safe. Now my complacency has set them on the verge of anarchy. I am lost, I-I beg you, tell me some way to save our way of life. If the monarchy loses support, then our enemies will divide us, they will-"  
  
The younger prince broke into sobs periodically broken with mumbled declarations of faith, desperation, and self-pity. Whenever his son in law had shown recordings with him on them, Yosho had always found it surreal and rather uncomfortable. This was no comparison. Somehow Seita had duplicated his younger voice and all too convincingly managed to add an intense anxiety to it. Still unwilling to look down, he looked back up at Tsunami, by now fully expecting something horrible to spawn from the pain in his hand.  
  
"No Jurain has ever figured out why they can directly communicate with trees spawned from Tsunami, but not with The Great Tree, Herself. Perhaps the energy is too concentrated, perhaps she was a creation more than a discovery...another secret lost in the eons of Jurai's history.  
  
"Whatever the explanation, the prince was only interested in a revelation."  
  
The next chuckle was restrained, clearly more to save resources than to save face.  
  
"How he always yearned, but would never have expected, and would never have suspected, that his 'answered prayer'---would be my 'successful ritual'."  
  
True to style, the subhuman throat signaled a similar change in the nature of Seita's illusion. Every one of Tsunami's leaves began to radiate with a gentle white glow. The prince raised his head. For a moment Yosho wondered if the younger version was going through a seizure, having sprung up with wide mouth shaking for the iron device tightening around his heart.  
  
Though the audience himself was standing almost lifeless, he felt something similar binding his stomach. He'd dreamed and fantasized of this moment countless times, now it was being shown to him as vividly as he could imagine by a foe he could comprehend less by the moment.  
  
The two princes watched together. Their sincerely hidden and the falsely projected emotions pulsed at the sight of The Tree's fading glow, then cowered not to overshadow the semitransparent luminescence of the woman stepping out from it.  
  
She was slightly taller than the prince, an angel-white dress covered all but her neck and hands. The divine wind that kept her golden hair in perpetual motion also made the plain yet elegant garment cling to her curvaceous body. She held her hands out to embrace all of existence with a transcendent love, and smiled for the photo commemorating her sainthood. Slow steps glided her forward, eyes remaining serenely closed.  
  
The prince slapped both trembling hands over his mouth, leaving nothing to hold back his engorged eyes. As the icon came close enough to spit on, Seita's vision sank to his knees in a terrified bow. Seita's viewer, meanwhile, stoically ground back the inner-explosions.  
  
"This is how you always envisioned her. When I first learned how to interact with people's dreams I spent a decade in ecstasy, merely exercising the creative freedom this completely relaxed and vulnerable state gave me. Yet, I only rarely dared observe yours Yosho, you were too important to taint."  
  
Tsunami halted and stood directly above one desperately devoted subject and completely oblivious to another. Her eyes opened like a titled baby doll, looking down on the younger with the serene and humbling blue of omnipotent power.  
  
"^F-Forgive me, my Goddess, my life, my^-" The prince's shocked whispers caught in his already clenched throat. Yosho shivered to imagine what it would feel like to believe he was finally beholding his goddess, and then to feel her lay both hands upon his shoulders.  
  
"Rise, child of Jurai." The sensually feminine voice crept out slow and soft, frosting Yosho's bones with the distinct croon behind it.  
  
His knees wobbled, and his head refused to lift from the floor, but the prince rose obediently. The vision of Tsunami kept her hands on his shoulders as she closed her eyes and leaned forward. Yosho watched as she tilted her mouth to the prince's ear and began to form soundless words. Jurai's true prophet of a false Goddess communicated the gravity of his revelation by simply turning his quivering hands into limp fish.  
  
After only a few minutes of this, Tsunami folded her arms into the opposing wide sleeves of her dress and took a step back. The young man must have stolen the sad strength to raise his head, but he managed, and was petrified again by the sight of her flawless and faultless face. The bow he eventually gave her arched with all the grace of forced and solidified certainty, but he still reverted to a trembling little boy when she gently grasped his presented forehead and placed a reassuring kiss upon it.  
  
The prince turned and strode purposefully toward the exit, taking no notice of the old priest watching the scene like a genocide aftermath, however, it seemed like everything might be ignored that didn't involve the new and divine objective.  
  
Yosho watched himself break into a jog and burst out through the huge main doors. The violent echo foreshadowed what he almost demanded the illusionist confirm. When he whirled around to face his vision of Tsunami she remained as serene as painless death. Words almost choked him. He swallowed and began breathing heavily, no longer bothering to ignore his sword, looking down with enough hate to launch it into the sun.  
  
Seita's voice, plain and stony, almost nasal without any glamour, snapped Yosho's focus back to The Goddess.  
  
"In your darkest moments-" 'she' likewise adopted his melodramatic pauses and mockingly confident grin, "you were always most eager to please me, and to ^join me^."  
  
Taking a step forward, it smiled wider from the well-concealed chuckle for Yosho's poorly concealed rage.  
  
"I offered you ^both^. For alas, as with all deities, once offended I must be appeased."  
  
She connected her fingertips over her belly and dug her stare into the priest.  
  
"Whatever influenced the sins of the nobility, the high crown allowed them to threaten the masses of my children, and whether by action or restraint, salvation can only come through ^sacrifice^!"  
  
The last word slashed out into razors and darkened eyes. Another step closer and Yosho instinctively stepped back into a fighting stance, holding his sword out but unable to ignite it. Even this perversion of what had once been the ideal was still too accurate a replica to attack. He forced his breath to calm, but had to gasp when the floor beneath him sank inside. There wasn't even enough time to look at the ceiling before he was back on the parapet and overwhelmed again by the sound of boiling Jurai.  
  
Yosho jerked his head to the left and right, then strode over to the ledge. The dark mass of shouting peasants had kept growing; he could hardly see anything but the sky beyond them. Looking down at the speaking area, he was relieved to see it still empty.  
  
A single voice descended through three, first the false goddess's, followed by Seita's true, then subhuman tone.  
  
"This---was to be---my greatest triumph!"  
  
He wore Tsunami's body as he levitated out a meter above the floor to the opposite corner of their vantage point. Even from a side distance the cosmetically perfect hybrid made Yosho turn away in horror. Desperate for reassurance, he looked back at the sword hilt. The white marble was still there.  
  
"Now ^watch^! And know the fame I could have given you!"  
  
Seita was almost shouting now, but hellish gurgles reduced his volume to a growl. He motioned with two upturned claws, the smallest curving in like barbs. Yosho told himself not to tremble as they both moved down to the empty speaking area.  
  
Positioned before the crowd, looking down with his hands behind his back, Seita took a moment to continue. Though he could detect a monotone in the shouts, Yosho kept absolute focus on the madman in Goddess's clothing turning to face him. The mob still provided a sufficient background.  
  
"Now what is it that upsets you more, that I would ^infuriate^ your people, or that I would ^impersonate^ your deity?" Still savoring his verse-speech as much as ever, Seita balanced one hand then the other in flamboyant emphasis, breathing psychotic grandeur. He received the usual response, but didn't seem surprised.  
  
"Still wondering what 'She' would have told you?" His painted smile widened perfectly perverse.  
  
"You'll know---what it ^knows^, you'll know---how it ^grows^, and you'll know---^why I pose^!" Facial expressions and hand positions shifted in clownish sync with his guttural recitation. He hugged himself tight then held his hands out to define megalomania, milking each word from the sky.  
  
"As much as beings throughout existence love to talk about it, no one, 'nothing' understands the power of faith---so well---as the faithless!" Ecstatic roars of laughter pierced Yosho's skull, burning through subhuman to inhuman to immortal, deep and thick as a mouthful of septic glue. A wind raced over them, turning Seita's hair and Tsunami's dress into golden and ivory flame. This continued till the moment Yosho feared he would bury his palms in his ears.  
  
He could only laugh for so long but obviously still loved directing visions over his audience's shoulder.  
  
"People of Jurai!"  
  
An enormous screen came to life behind Yosho, further projecting his young image to those standing even a mile away, and sending his voice to those even farther back. The older Jurain helplessly turned white around.  
  
The prince was smeared and splattered with blood. He walked forward at a slow ritualistic stride, carrying a small body under each arm. By the color and style of their hair they could only be his sisters. They hung like wet rolls of carpet, their entrails dragging on the ground alongside the prince's freshly dawned holy robe. A deep red carpet smeared behind them.  
  
Once again he walked past obliviously, nearly brushing one of Aeka's bloody ponytails against his future's elbow. Every member of the raging mob had, within that first minute of entrance, subsided from a roar, to a shout, to a mumble, to absolute silence. The priest could hear moisture squishing in the prince's boots as he walked over the podium to its farthest ledge. A last survivor called out with the reach of a planet-splitting canyon.  
  
"People of Jurai! People of Jurai, I have heard your calls for justice." Though he repeated himself at first like many public speakers, he spoke in a monotone, eyes washed out like sun-bleached bone.  
  
"You have been wronged by those who were sworn to protect you, their hedonism and vanity has oppressed and endangered the well being of the common citizen, the most precious water of Jurai.  
  
"The high crown did nothing to prevent this. ^I^ did nothing to prevent this. Our arrogant confidence made us blind. But my guilt is inconsequential to the poverty so many of you have suffered; there is no sacrifice too great for my people.  
  
"As in so many times of hardship, I prayed to our beloved Goddess, I prayed to The Great Tree Tsunami for guidance. And this time, this time she answered more clearly and vividly than ever before. She placed the responsibility, as I have, on the head beneath the crown. But more than that, she willed that a sacrifice be made for the wrongs allowed to befall her children.  
  
"In accordance, I have made this sacrifice of my own flesh and blood, and I bid all of Jurai to accept the will of their Goddess. So truly did she say unto me, that no being may claim exclusive rights to the trees any longer, that for Jurai to survive---its nobility ^must perish^!"  
  
The prince took a step closer to the ledge, gripping his slain sisters more tightly and looking up to the sky as he spoke. Seita hovered up to his right, fingers arched and face deathly focused on properly dictating the puppet's climax.  
  
"She bid that I tell all Jurains to free themselves from the shadows of their masters' private gardens. She bid me relieve everyone of any right to her power, to live free on not but her memory."  
  
The prince looked into the sky as the torches below brightened.  
  
"She bid that my final words declare: 'The Spirit---is dead."  
  
No more steps left till the end of the ledge.  
  
"'Long-live---^The Ghost^!'"  
  
With eyes closed and mouth limp, the last prince of Jurai plummeted down, holding tight to the princesses till they all cracked and burst against armor-polished wood. The crowd and the audience forgot to breathe.  
  
Seita looked down at his projected plans, then craned his neck around to bathe his priest in the consuming wrath of oblivion. The mob's roar became deafening. Weapons' fire, explosions, and falling architecture signaled the beginning of a world-riot.  
  
Yosho watched the blue from the white threaten to swallow him and prepared to confront the true ambition of his foe. Loosening his grip on the sword, he thought on how there had never been any mention of material gain in these 'plans', he remembered the subtle and overt challenges offered almost every time the guest spoke, and reconsidered what little he knew of demons. Never would he have imagined feeling so frightened when at last presented with the answer to his pleas for some sign of more than here.  
  
Fueled by this indirect gaze of victory, the image of Seita levitated up and out with his back to the crowd, spreading arms into the billowing wind to glorify the conduction. Behind him the beloved trees that decorated the countryside added to his spectacle, going up in flame one by one. He bellowed to the sky, passing judgment with insane abandon.  
  
"And so, consumed by a plague of servants without masters, the 'Empire of Life' would descend into ^chaos^! And from, and into that chaos, all surrounding kingdoms would easily fall; feeding my dominion with the consuming power of their surrender, of their ^apathy^. They would show me the deepest pits of the mortal to ^immortal^ mind!"  
  
Without missing a nerve, Seita clutched and tore long chunks of hair from his scalp. They trembled in his fists as he looked down to devour the priest.  
  
"^Yes^! I am the one who deserves this and more. I would live to hear of it--- even after your very language was dead, the day---when Jurai--- BUUURRRNED!"  
  
The climax of his vision spread out, enveloping air and melting light. For a moment Yosho envisioned being made to numbly watch his own flesh burn to the cinder. He took a step back and brought the hilt's white eye in front of the figure, now gradually relaxing, lowering its arms and head.  
  
The tyrant's grandeur faded, hair tossed to the wind and re-grown into a ponytail. Tsunami's dress tightened into a steel gray suit.  
  
"Do you understand now? Do you see why you were so important to my masterwork?"  
  
Seita's projection of himself set down and climbed off the wall. Among the screaming and fires its voice was like a single piece of iron struck lightly in a deserted junkyard. It took almost zombie-like steps towards its audience, growing a lavender tie and matching subtle makeup. His hair darkened slightly from the invisible hands further slicking it back. As it spoke again the riot began to fade.  
  
"I spent every aspect of my existence preparing for my orchestra. This vision of having your ultimate aid in Jurai's fall, it drove me like a second life."  
  
The screams faded to wind while the fires dwindled to starlight. All of Jurai slept in glass. Yosho looked around and looked back at Seita, swallowing and absently wondering how long ago he had broken a sweat. One more footstep brought the projection just out of sword range. A look of regret too callous to be remorse directed its face downward.  
  
"But it was not to be."  
  
Silence took once last breath before it was torn away by a gigantic explosion near the west towers of the palace. Some patrol ship had been obliterated by a familiar red energy blast. An organic wail rose up to forever remind the real Jurai of complete terror.  
  
"MIIIIIIYYYAAA!"  
  
***  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Eight is Martyr-  
  
-Part 2-  
  
Any title can be won. And nothing can be done. Will the curious fury say how?  
  
Each King's time will come. And nothing's will be done. Is your bravery wavering now?  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
Three more patrol ships charged towards the palace to be sliced along a single red beam of energy. Ryo-ohki paused near the speaking platform, her shadow spreading over the ringleader and his crowd like a ragged circus elephant. Another shrill echo of thunder carried the vessel in an arch toward the palace center and The Great Tree. Yosho watched a larger group of Jurai ships give chase as if he didn't know and wouldn't relive their fate. Seita's projection descended into a bitter whisper and did not look up as its audience looked back.  
  
"Other interests decided to present themselves."  
  
Thunder rolled back in a wail, louder and more agonized. The deadly blossom of organic minerals retreated into view firing desperately. Even from this radically different perspective, Yosho recognized the battle details more easily than any other. A cluster of Jurai energy slammed into Ryo-ohki's hull as Funaho flew around to attack from a different angle.  
  
"Why don't we follow them, Yosho? Few people get the opportunity to relive a memory this way; you might learn something."  
  
A faint red spotlight seemed to be focusing where they stood, Yosho looked up to see one of Ryo-ohki's blasts descending upon them. He blinked rapidly and the light transformed into a pile of high boulders beneath a blue sky. Ryoko's soulless battle cry nearly froze him against shielding his eyes from a shower of pulverized rock. A cloud of dust consumed and dissipated to show Jurai's young prince narrowly escaping a lethal slash of energy.  
  
"That conflict was extraordinary." Seita's projection leaned casually into a split in the rocks, watching from behind and over Yosho's shoulder as the battle elevated into a war. This understatement prompted another ear splitting screech.  
  
"You know, Ryoko might suggest that Kagato's control made her fight below ability, but he only ever had control over her will. Even if given her body, he could never have lasted this long against Jurai's greatest swordsman---in his prime."  
  
At the return of mocking confidence, Yosho's most intense memory replayed. He could not help but gape at the wild animal writhing to claw him from the end of his sword. It would have taken something unimaginably more violent to distract him from those final moments before Ryoko lost consciousness.  
  
Someone was happy to oblige, reappearing between them and point-counting the gems as they appeared on the sword hilt.  
  
"Three...two...one. Crisis averted." The potentially biased referee refolded his arms and scowled back at the spectators.  
  
"Attention diverted."  
  
Yosho's younger self looked at his sword with a mixture of relief and disbelief, the pose almost becoming a kind of circular or omnipresent memory. As the prince knelt over his vanquished foe, the priest could almost hear the way she had breathed; faint and slow as a trance. He remembered the pitiful moan she leaked out when he lifted her eyelids to find soft gold in the place of violent ruby. He even remembered the soft and surprisingly delicate feel of her body cradled against him. The prince began walking back to the crash-landed Funaho, the subdued demon a rescued child.  
  
"You put her in a stasis chamber," Seita interrogated bitterly, "but tell me what you ^didn't^ do."  
  
"I-" Yosho looked over at the projection with a new kind of confused anxiety. Reliving a memory this way shouldn't shake him more than Seita's future vision.  
  
"Funaho was too damaged from the crash to take off again safely, but you didn't have any backup. When you took off in pursuit there was an entire armada on its way. You told them to stand down, that if this 'devil' didn't shoot them down, you would."  
  
"I-I did not want any more lives to be lost."  
  
The recreated environment around them froze like a photograph. Some hilarious and cruel irony crawled up in the projection's throat, amused chuckle to piercing cackle in five seconds flat.  
  
"Oh the hero's vanitee-hee-hee!"  
  
Seita's projection copied off Ryoko and teleported out of sight, reappearing inches away from Yosho's standing ground.  
  
"Do I need to show you everything?!"  
  
The screaming close-up was followed by complete darkness, quickly fading into a new angle of the memory. Yosho watched himself climbing out of Ryo- ohki's crater at a forest edge.  
  
"After putting Ryoko safely away, you found that her ship was dormant, as well as mostly buried. You 'could' have went right back to Funaho, 'could' have transmitted a distress call-" Bitter lectures from all directions turned to a vengeful accusation directly behind Yosho's left ear.  
  
"But you DIDN'T!"  
  
Wincing first at the harsh volume, footsteps whirled Yosho around to watch his younger self walk through and to his future. The battle weary prince disappeared into the dense forest.  
  
"A life-saver, and a path-finder."  
  
New and agelessly familiar surroundings illuminated around the cold monotone.  
  
"You wandered for miles, but eventually---'found what you were looking for'."  
  
Double meaning didn't strike as overtly as resentment. Regardless, the young prince's face still lit up like a child's firework at his first glimpse of a Shinto shrine. At last he began to show the appropriate mannerisms of someone visiting an alien world.  
  
"Hello there." A frail old man stepped out of the priest's quarters. The humble building was only slightly more rugged looking than the one Yosho maintained, but the ceremonial robe weighing down this collection of wrinkles and white hair hadn't changed in 700 years.  
  
Prince Yosho stared in bewilderment, pocketing his sword and clearing his throat half way through his response.  
  
"You---you speak Jurain?"  
  
"Excuse me?" The old man asked with a slightly less confused expression.  
  
Stepping in to gesture towards Yosho's past, the narrator gave his version of the revelation.  
  
"That's when you realized where you were, having chased Ryoko for months at full speed to get to a planet that was not on the records and still primitive. But strangely enough one of its languages was programmed into Jurain translators. It only took this short conversation to make this the 'barbarous planet' your father had 'rescued' your mother from."  
  
Yosho watched himself recompose and bow to the priest, just as his mother had taught him.  
  
"Please forgive my rudeness, I am lost, a stranger in this land."  
  
The old man smiled at the change in tone and nodded.  
  
"I haven't had any new visitors to the shrine in years, I hope you were not harmed by that earthquake."  
  
"Earthquake? Oh, yes, the earthquake. Thank you, I am unharmed." Noble princes of Jurai often have to chew their ire for liars and keep their eyes averted to focus on a plan.  
  
"Someone from the nearby village said that they saw two battling demons falling from the sky."  
  
Though casually mentioned, young Yosho still had visible trouble swallowing the rumor.  
  
"Is that so?"  
  
"Hm," the old man nodded with closed eyes, "if it is so then let us hope that they vanquished each other."  
  
Yosho could feel Seita's semi-private chuckle better than he could hear it, like a stained hand smearing its film along a pane of glass. Meanwhile, the elderly priest returned to inviting smiles.  
  
"But you look tired from your travels. Come, I have some extra soup, and I'll look at my maps while you rest."  
  
The prince followed trustingly, again looking around with a softening light in his eyes. Yosho remembered and followed without moving; as primitive and alien as it had looked, he'd shown less nervousness with each step.  
  
Moment by moment he relived the experience, watching himself accept hospitality with a newfound passiveness, listening while he strained to fabricate an impression of himself as a traveling merchant, whose supplies were washed away in a river. When the prince rose to leave and give proper thanks, the priest offered something that shook the stranger anew. Bittersweet emotions shimmered behind Yosho's eyes as he barley maintained his immunity before all too accurate illusions.  
  
"I will say a prayer for your travels good sir, go in peace."  
  
The prince stared for a moment at the little man who had just offered him a high honor for no apparent reason. He bowed again more slowly before walking back towards the crash site with a thoughtful step.  
  
Yosho remained standing alongside the priest, held tightly by Seita's enduring silence. Fears of being forced to re-watch the past 700 years of his life vanished as the world faded to stone and to forest again. The prince was walking right towards him and the ledge of an unchanged rock formation. With casual agility, his younger self descended the boulders, sighing to see the crater through the trees. A light breeze moaned through the cave behind him. He turned and, somehow compelled, entered with his sword lighting the way.  
  
For long minutes Yosho waited for his younger self to reemerge, waited for Seita to make a comment, and received both in sync.  
  
"What were you thinking Yosho? What inspiration struck you in that haven, and that hole?"  
  
Smooth but unfocused, Seita's voice seemed to be asking both the present and the past without expecting an answer from either. An obvious dilemma or five raged through the prince's mind as he alternated glances between the crash site, the cave, and the direction he'd left the shrine.  
  
"At this point I told myself that you were holding off the S.O.S till you made sure the natives would not be troubled by the arrival of other Jurain ships." The monotone stone he criticized himself with did little to crush his spite. "I didn't foresee the potential impact of your decision."  
  
Yosho swallowed, dry nausea at the thought of what had been watching him during that pivotal decision. The guilt was haunting enough on its own, now that it had help he could feel a fear-bend in the last wall of his composure.  
  
Spring greens falling to brown, covered in white, and swelling back again as their position returned to the old man's shrine. The smooth beauty of this politely rushed transition went unnoticed. Now Yosho was standing near an outdoor alter, watching a man offer ritual incense. By the hair and stature he recognized himself, the first years when he lived at the Masaru shrine, eagerly learning the ways of this new ancient tradition. The hundreds-of years-young priest shifted and entered meditation with a serenity untouched by the empty serenade.  
  
"You told the priest that you wanted to learn everything about his culture, and would help him teach a self defense class to pay your keep. Whenever possible you went off to work on securing Ryoko in the cave, replanting Funaho in a position where she could keep the pirate alive.  
  
"For years I kept watch over the Lord of Jurai and the Priest of Earth, waiting alongside your family for a hero's welcome."  
  
A shadow pulled Yosho's eyes away from his meditating self. The solemn image had reappeared, dressed in a priest's clothes, sitting on the altar like an impatient boy at a bus stop. The breeze he announced himself with felt predictably unnervingly real.  
  
"So why? Why replace a prince with a priest?"  
  
Two elegant fingers plucked two smoking incense sticks as the rest stood up casually on the altar. A hand, a wood block, and an iron bell struck themselves. Yosho watched the sounds match tempo with each new perpendicular cross over, and noticed that even a little ash fell off in the process. Holding both sticks up to trap Yosho's head in a shrinking corner angle, Seita's projection kept only one eye open for focus. A thin ribbon of smoke parted around and drew attention to it.  
  
"Did that drained and comatose woman need a special warden?"  
  
His question answered itself, but gorged out anemic sarcasm with vengeful insight.  
  
"Why abandon your people, your ^Goddess^, to favor the world your mother discarded easily enough."  
  
The priest that would be Katshuhito didn't respond, the priest that had been Katshuhito scowled. One blue eye caught and clenched fire, moving the incense to put the elder's forehead in crosshairs. Both sticks started burning down like slow fuses.  
  
"It was the energy you felt when you first walked into this shrine, the energy you've kept perpetuated at your own. You were always consumed with either sword practice---or escaping into prayer before Tsunami."  
  
The wick burned down and the projection opened its other eye before closing both.  
  
"But you weren't satisfied with merely having the Jurai power, you wanted to ^be^ the Jurai power.  
  
Smoke continued, crawling out from each painted nail as it brought both hands back into an arch before its chest. If nothing could mock holiness with grace, then this projection would.  
  
"A swelling part of you loathed your people, their Nobles, and so much petty materialism, for ^your^ truest happiness came when you felt you were approaching 'oneness', a 'transcendence' from the pain of self."  
  
Seita's projection shook its head to mock, before opening its eyes to invert pity.  
  
"Yet, distractions and interruptions abounded the life you were born into, and you knew it would only get worse after taking the throne---and your half-sister."  
  
The smoke shut off from the projection's fingers as it gestured around with half a shrug.  
  
"But then at last your self-sacrificing nature paid off; here you were given the perfect oasis to renounce nobility...and wrap yourself up in the holy womb these simple people provided."  
  
Seita's projection hugged itself till its exaggerated smile wilted and rotted off. Yosho felt its eyes boring the stench into him.  
  
"I kept checking up on you for centuries, watching you travel to different shrines to avoid suspicions about your curious longevity. But then," it swallowed a heavy ball of something petrified and no less foul, "'like father like son.'"  
  
Grinning up the side of its cheek, cursing down the length of its nose, but even the projection couldn't keep such a sneer going and still darken authority.  
  
"Similar as they were to Jurains, you enjoyed the earth people---one of them enough to start a family with her, as if your vows to Aeka had been made by someone else."  
  
"How self-indulgent." Head to the side in halfcocked surprise, Seita's projection ground its teeth behind a smile. It lasted no longer than needed, giving back to focus as it stepped off the altar and onto the past's head, balancing perfectly on still bowed shoulders.  
  
"The key character in my composition---completely caught up in the most coddling of compulsions." Phlegm tore in its throat, but the projection took little time in savoring another word sculpture, hair wiped forward and back in the time needed to put out the incense with a sizzle.  
  
"The great prince of Jurai, trapped by a lust for the euphoria of peace and righteousness, thoroughly addicted to his spiritual ^narcotic^!"  
  
One breath clenched in its jaw, saluting the observation with a neck full of tendons. Slowly, calmly, Yosho let himself breath as well, less visibly he hoped.  
  
Seita's projection looked down at its hands, caressing thumbs over fingertips till they reached the sharp parts, then looked back at Yosho with a more curious sort of intensity, suggesting that he actually wanted an answer for the next question.  
  
"And thus, when it was clear you'd found your early retirement, I returned to Jurai. Do you know what I found?"  
  
Yosho swallowed and tried not to look at the illusion's new pedestal.  
  
"Come now, take a guess. There is 'some' open communication between your two homes now, isn't there? Haven't you managed to pick up a clue or two or three?"  
  
Yosho's organs clenched, his mouth shriveled, but he would not give this illusion any more than he had to. A painted frown played the part of half a smile, recognizing the routine they'd created without concern, then chuckling, then cackling.  
  
"I-I-I knew it!" The projection pointed at him then gestured at clawing out his heart. "You have no IDEA how important you've become!"  
  
Smoothing back its hair and breathing down its laughter, blue tyranny stepped off the shoulders of gray submission.  
  
"I'm sure your parents said they've missed you terribly," another chuckle stepped the suspense forward, "they always were so very 'diplomatic'."  
  
Yosho steadied himself but couldn't even balance his feet amid the tension building for this next revelation. Between believing Seita's words and disregarding them all, the greater danger seemed to swing closer on a pendulum.  
  
"Seriously now, could the most beloved of Jurai's nobility chase a demon into space, not return, and simply be 'missed'? No Yosho, in the eyes of all the people you saved you became more than a hero, more than a celebrity, you became a legend!"  
  
The word steamed out through sharp teeth much as they had during the final moments of Jurai's fall. Yosho's mouth quivered open at this new information, inadvertently begging the source for more. Though still too bloated with resentment to pass for a storyteller or a journalist, the illusion tried for both.  
  
"That's right, when you and Ryoko both failed to reappear after more than 50 years, word spread that you had given your own life to keep Jurai forever safe from the dreaded demon. Artists and scholars began dedicating poetry and architecture to you, singing praises to your gloriously violent selflessness."  
  
The projection cracked fresh hate into both knuckles.  
  
"The keepers of The Great Tree started to believe the Goddess Herself had chosen you to be Her champion, the savior of all Jurains. They collected your friends and teachers, your yes-men and parasites, to make a formal document of the 'wisdom' you passed along before your great deed, surely invaluable to anyone not fortunate enough to have known 'The Great Yosho'.  
  
"Your sacrifice spread through the Empire and beyond, all through tales of the kind prince who heard the voice behind the Jurai power and gave his life to protect his people. Prayers to Tsunami were often offered to you as the keepers published their---'your' book."  
  
Stopping halfway through its next step, Seita's projection fought to calm itself again, sighing heavily and pressing one sharpened finger into its lower lip. Yosho dreaded when the eyes would open again, but felt little relief when they looked off into the trees. It spoke through its hand in a dry whisper.  
  
"Little by little---humble philanthropy's emotional caress became more stylish than grandeur's," not wanting to leave the audience out of the performance, the projection lowered its hand and, staring, clutched at Yosho's throat again, "particularly among the less endowed masses---and the nobles who wished to appease them."  
  
Folding hands behind its back, the projection roughly ground its neck up to the sky.  
  
"Jurai lost its potential," it hissed dreamy ethers at some specific star still visible in daylight then shared them back down at Yosho, "and I lost my opportunity."  
  
The illusion stopped for a long silent breath, not blinking to see the story sinking in and to feel it being correctly.  
  
"It's ironic really; martyr-fans are so ripe for delusion and devaluation of their own individual lives, yet their egos are so swollen with 'selflessness' and coddled by 'higher purpose' hopes---that they are all but immune to mass apathy."  
  
Somewhere beyond all that malice, Yosho thought he could sense a fascination truer than any of the day's explanations. But the moment was lost in the increasing rage twisting his narrator's features.  
  
"Regardless of what they believed about you, those in power recognized how to best use this 'Great Yosho's' popularity to maintain social--- 'stability'. Even though none your immediate family were willing to believe you were dead, they could not deny the importance of ruling the people through their celebrities."  
  
A chuckle built itself on iron and mucus as the projection sat back on the back of the peaceful man who would be a saint. It reached into his robe and pulled out the sword, watching for Yosho to do the same.  
  
"Hm, the trouble your parents have gone through to keep you and your grandson a secret; seems to have all---paid off." The projection balanced the weapon idly between opposite forefingers after lightly exploring its texture.  
  
"If only those people knew the brave, selfless, Tsunami-inspired prince had in truth been looking for an excuse to abandon them, just so he could escape into a more 'spiritual' existence." The sour word darkened the projection's eye and lip lines. Yosho watched nails turn from a soft red to a radiant burgundy.  
  
"Maybe it's wrong to place all the blame on the icon; you probably just assumed that they'd find a new prince. The Jurai power, if it really ^had^ a consciousness at all, would certainly not mind one less disciple."  
  
Balanced rigidly between the projection's palms, the hilt caught the sun in its gems and shone it into Yosho's eyes for a flinch. Each new and softer word began compacting it a little more.  
  
"Surely giving your life to something that brought you such tranquility couldn't harm anyone," the sword disappeared into the projection's clapped hands, it lowered them onto its lap and lashed out with a hushed and no less deadly subhuman hiss.  
  
"^But it did^."  
  
A bead of sweat slid down Yosho's cheek. The projection didn't watch it, probably didn't see it, and definitely wouldn't need it. The former First Prince of Jurai let himself look at his sword, knowing the uncertainty it would reveal, but hardly knowing why he gave into the whim so passively.  
  
*This is careless, foolish. He's looking back at me through that white gem.  
  
*But couldn't he see me anyway?  
  
*No. Not like this. Why am I distracting myself, do I need to look upon Jurai again, draw strength from my heritage?  
  
*But how can I now that-  
  
Yosho clenched and pocketed the hilt forcefully, looking back and specifically looking down at the projection and its smirk, intending to dismiss an overused overconfidence mask.  
  
The eyes were frozen open and empty, finally attacking him, drawing out his strength like a syringe tipped with oblivion. Yosho fought not to gasp, or wail, or flee as he saw Seita's own meditation. All the pomp and violence had been an opening act for nothing, for emptiness honed into a weapon lashing out on a velvet tongue.  
  
"Aeka and Sasami abandoned their families to find you. Leaving Tenchi to free Ryoko led Kagato here to nearly destroy you all.  
  
"And by defying your birthright, you unwittingly aborted my ambition, bringing me here to avenge and ^renew it^." The projection stood and stepped around, looking at the younger priest then lifting him by one finger beneath his chin.  
  
Yosho began to tremble as the projection turned to pick another incense stick from the rudely extinguished bowl, holding it like a scalpel before the past's forehead.  
  
"Your Goddess may have forgiven you," the green ooze on the tip began to bubble and then smoke something to churn any stomach, "but I have not."  
  
Seita's image dug the small ember in, twisting it like a cigar in an ashtray. Yosho was prepared to feel his skin burn as the old yard faded back into his present office.  
  
---  
  
The first edges of relief kept their distance, but all the familiar sensations beckoned an overcoming embrace. Yosho breathed anxiously and kept his eyes moving to keep the rest from yielding again. The position of the sun spoke hours, but the position of a few other things reassured some hopes. Expecting to have knocked something over during his loss of perception, he was almost calm enough for relief.  
  
"End of act one."  
  
Seita's voice made the sword sound clear and smooth. Without the urge to think to hesitate this time, Yosho stared directly into the white marble. And there it was again, this time saving any need for illusions. After centuries of perfecting the meditative state, he at last found himself in its inversion; peace through union with existence replaced by fear in confrontation with oblivion. He should lock the sword away where no living thing could think of it. He should drop it and run screaming.  
  
"And here you are again, seven point zero two centuries later, near the same battle grounds, a different demon in your custody."  
  
No visual illusions, yet the voice seemed even less believable without a flamboyant body to attach it to. The weight of the sword seemed to be leaving his hands for his chest.  
  
"It's not really a victory though, is it? You've limited the range of my influence, but you've done nothing to slow my ambition."  
  
A thoughtful silence ensued. Yosho slowly began to hold the hilt up to eyelevel, the setting sun refracted through the gems, but not the marble. He felt his arm muscles tense around thoughts of the lake, the cave, the core of the sun.  
  
"And the irony persists; by putting me so close to an implement of Jurai you've only made it easier to connect to those who share its power."  
  
An old man's patiently and fearfully long blink pushed back returning visions of invasion. But no, this thing could not read thoughts, could only twist them.  
  
"It recognizes---interacts with your energy like a tracking device," a thoughtful chuckle punctuated loudly for such a small sphere, "and I wouldn't be surprised if I could do the same with Ryoko's other gems."  
  
Eyes almost too wide to look wise, Yosho tried to swell himself into calling a bluff. But Seita's voice, without even hardening, went evenly serious.  
  
"You know Yosho, being part of this union between your power and Ryoko's has made me realize something. I long wondered about the energy Funaho fed both you and Ryoko with, why it lasted so long away from Jurai. Normally you and your tree would have wilted in only a few hundred years after taking root in alien soil."  
  
Two gentle winds danced leaves over the fallen door but, Yosho decided, didn't feel menacing enough to be illusions.  
  
And now it is quite clear to me; while you were concerned with keeping Ryoko alive, by keeping her gems in the sword, the energy in ^them^ has been keeping you both alive more than the dwindling power in Funaho."  
  
A short silence made way for a quick chuckle.  
  
"If you're worried about me trying to 'cross' or 'uncross' any wires while I'm in here, rest assured; I don't think that would be possible. Still, now that I've reacquainted you with your unashamed fall to earth, and unknown rise to heaven, I can already feel a great rush of power.  
  
"It's quite an improvement over the one's I received working lesser wonders on the rest of your 'gifted' family, though I probably wouldn't have been able to put on such a spectacle for you if they hadn't warmed me up."  
  
Yosho wanted to smother the voice in his fist again, and would have were his chest not still hoarding weight upon weight.  
  
"I'm sure they'll have plenty more to contribute."  
  
Nothing should sound so dangerously confident from within a prison, but Yosho had to hide his fear better, but he had to tell himself it was only fear. The weapon's voice would be met head on, even as it traveled through muscles, organs, and into his skull on a snaking point of this same emptying needle.  
  
"What---has it all been for my Prince, my Teacher, my Savior? What enemy grows closer to you for being vanquished? How-" a sharp breath steamed around Yosho's throat and down Seita's, "can a quest for peace bring so much selfish misery?"  
  
There was no denying this swelling emotion its name. Yosho hadn't felt it so strongly since his boyhood, those nights where he forgot sleep, consumed by a lethargy that swallowed sadness and rage as easily as joy. Depression's recognizable transience lost, those were the nights where hopelessness became him.  
  
All the beauty of the world was not lost, or forgotten, but never existent. Certain that he was edging defeat, certain that this feeling was equal to the voice oozing out of the sword, Yosho thought he could see the mouth of oblivion in a white marble.  
  
"We've got time together to figure it out now, though I'm sure you'll learn to 'transcend', to shut me out like so many other things. I'll never have my occasion to take Tsunami's water now, in the end I suppose you'll get to experience my life slipping away, while you remain young."  
  
Yosho imagined Seita's hands doing something seductive, but couldn't imagine how long it might take for the marble to crumble, and wasn't prepared for the moment's silence to be so brief.  
  
"^Like---so---many---others^."  
  
The words echoed and dissipated into a cruel whisper, pouring directly into his mind like a thick caramel. Intrusion, violation, Seita was spreading a hand over Yosho's consciousness with perverse glee. No perception of the office changed, none of his senses took in anything abnormal, but for that moment something added itself to the sovereignty of his existence, a parasite of omnipresence. Knowing best his rapist, he felt the depths of wielded madness. Gone and clean again in a second moment, everything tangible came first, but Seita's voice came before that.  
  
*Hello, Prince Yosho. I'm happy to be here with you now. Please pay attention to my voice, and to every word I say. You should relax so that we can begin. This is for the best so do not be afraid. Relax and relax again, pay attention still to my voice, pay attention again to my words.  
  
*Now.  
  
The sword's weight drug Yosho's arm down like a thick rope of taffy, he swallowed and began to breath very slowly.  
  
*Begin with the number 21. We will begin counting backwards from 21 till we reach 0. At each number you will be more at peace, more relaxed where you are. I will count out loud while you count to yourself.  
  
*Ready.  
  
*Now.  
  
*Begin.  
  
*21. At peace.  
  
*20. At peace.  
  
*19. At peace.  
  
*18. At peace.  
  
*17. At peace.  
  
*16. At peace.  
  
*15. At peace.  
  
*14. At peace.  
  
*13. At peace.  
  
*12. At peace.  
  
*11. At peace.  
  
*10. At peace.  
  
*9. At peace.  
  
*8. At peace.  
  
*7. At peace.  
  
*6. At peace  
  
*5. At peace.  
  
*4. At peace.  
  
*3. At peace.  
  
*2. At peace.  
  
*1. At peace.  
  
*Zero. You are now at peace.  
  
*Prince Yosho, do you feel at peace?  
  
"Yes." Yosho answered with a bland voice, blinking his head forward a few slow centimeters.  
  
*Do you know why we're speaking today?  
  
"No."  
  
*We're here to talk about your life, Prince Yosho. Or rather, your lifespan, the length of your life.  
  
"Masaki, Katshuhito."  
  
*What's that?  
  
"Masaki, Katshuhito. My name is Masaki, Katshuhito"  
  
*I see. Katshuhito is not a prince, he is the Shinto priest who cares for this shrine. You are Katshuhito, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Jurai, Yosho was and is a prince.  
  
* Correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*He would not tell somebody who he was unless it was safe, or unless they already knew, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*I already know. You were named Yosho Jurai, you have given yourself other names over the years. Masaki, Katshuhito is one of these names, correct?  
  
After two extra moments of hesitation, Yosho answered.  
  
"Yes."  
  
*In this case if I address you by one name, I am also addressing you by the other, do you understand?  
  
"Yes. Who are you?"  
  
*You are at peace Yosho, and evil cannot harm those who are at peace, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You believe that Seita is evil, correct?  
  
"Yes." Half a hesitation, and a slightly lower tone crept in.  
  
*Since you are now at peace, Seita cannot harm you, and you have no reason to fear him, correct?  
  
"I---don't know. Seita is different."  
  
*Is it evil to show enjoyment when people are in pain?  
  
"Yes"  
  
*Does Seita do this?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Is Seita evil?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You are at peace now Yosho, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do people at peace need to fear evil?  
  
"No."  
  
*Are you afraid of Seita?  
  
"No."  
  
*I am Seita. Are you afraid of me?  
  
"No."  
  
*That is correct, Prince Yosho. You are at peace, and you are not afraid of me, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You are at peace, and you are not afraid of listening to my words, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Good.  
  
*You are at peace, Prince Yosho. You will listen to my words.  
  
***  
  
It takes some practice to successfully keep the bitter dregs in the teacup, more practice than Ryoko had, or needed. She solemnly made goofy faces to fish flakes of green peace out of her teeth. Meanwhile, Tenchi and Aeka simultaneously rose towards the teapot to give everyone a refill. They noticed each other moments before their hands met and promptly retreated, Aeka blushed while Tenchi simply averted his gaze. This little moment did not go unnoticed; Ryoko's eyes darkened for jealousy then darkened again for guilt. She silently poured them all some more tea and sat back down, silently nursing the lump in her throat as the Washu-worry-count clicked higher. Looking for a new visual pattern to get lost in, she let her eyes fall on and climb Aeka's kimono.  
  
Much to her surprise and relief, she was not looking at Tenchi. Neither of them had thanked her for pouring more tea, but it was evident now that, for Aeka anyway, it was more important to mentally absent. Her rival's use of the same coping mechanism should have brought the same combination of surprise and relief, but all Ryoko could think of was illusions, mocking and cruel voices, the nightmare. She'd been so close, those blue eyes and that blonde hair.  
  
Gold ballooned but couldn't lift her head. The throat tingle felt like a weak whisper, but was apparently loud enough to grab attention.  
  
"Mihoshi."  
  
"What did you say Ryoko?" Tenchi asked hesitantly.  
  
"Mihoshi! Where's Mihoshi!" Ryoko forced her head up with a jerk, looking towards the front then back door. A third of her legs were ready to stand.  
  
"Mihoshi? She's-" He attempted a calming voice, but it caught on the horrible realization his throat.  
  
"Don't you remember? She went on patrol this morning," Aeka continued in a lifeless voice, "with Seita."  
  
Ryoko looked at Tenchi with helpless furry, and he responded with a desperate reach for control.  
  
"Now wait a minute wait a minute, I'm sure she's fine. Washu has a link to her ship, so if anything was wrong-"  
  
"How can you be so sure, Tenchi? How can you be so sure of anything anymore?" The pirate sank back down to the couch, hands lost in her hair, eyes angled down but frozen open.  
  
"Stop it, Ryoko!" Aeka sprang to her feet, glaring down with fists balled at her sides. "We can't talk like that. We can't let this---this ^break us^! Washu's probably categorizing that monster's innards as we speak!"  
  
Ryoko looked up at the princess with slight bewilderment. Strangely unashamed of her morbid prediction, Aeka merely swallowed, sitting back to her tea and whatever else she was using to divert comfort to her mind.  
  
"That's right Ryoko," Tenchi managed, forcing away the unpleasant and too pleasant image, "Mihoshi's probably on her way home now, she may even get here before dad and Sasami do."  
  
There was no room in either Ryoko's or Aeka's anxiety to acknowledge that they had looked over at each other in perfect sync. Flawless empathy ignored, there was no room to feel rude for shouting.  
  
"'Dad and Sasami?!' Tenchi, what the hell are we supposed to do if they get back before Washu does?!" Ryoko was ready to climb across the table, and the sight made Tenchi sink back into his chair. The attack, however, came from his side.  
  
"Tenchi! Please, don't let Sasami..." Aeka clutched onto his hand for dear life, but trailed off before she could make any last requests. Her wavering eyes frozen on his till they sank away for fringe tears.  
  
Thankful to still be assertive when the situation was serious enough, Tenchi still shivered under the weight of Aeka's hands.  
  
"Don't worry miss Aeka, if they get back before we get an answer from Washu then-" he paused for thought and exhaled, "then I'll get grandfather to take them both away to the city for a while."  
  
Ryoko rose and tried to square her shoulders.  
  
"Alright then, I'll go call him and tell him that-"  
  
"Hold, on Ryoko."  
  
Halfway out of the living room she stopped and turned with a puzzled expression.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Don't tell him anything yet, okay. I'd like to keep him from worrying if I can."  
  
Both girls searched for understanding in his face. He looked at the floor with hands in the air, denying them knowledge to put them at ease.  
  
"Please, just let me think of something to say first."  
  
"Okay, Tenchi."  
  
Ryoko slowly resigned herself back to the couch.  
  
One last word from the self appointed leader before they returned to a silent commune. Looking over at the clock, Tenchi added almost casually:  
  
"Besides, it's Friday, he'll be meditating for at least another half hour. He might not even hear the phone, and I'd rather not interrupt him."  
  
***  
  
Brilliant cherry blossoms and crisp leaves mixed with other dead vegetation, dancing and falling in the wind. Birdsong and tree-rattle caressed the silence. Masaki shrine looked deserted, as it usually did when closed to the public. Millions of people were enjoying the romantic beginnings of the sunset, but none from this blessedly high vantage point.  
  
The wind blew another fistful of leaves and a pinch of cherry blossoms inside the office and over Prince Yosho's feet. In his Katshuhito disguise, the wrinkles fold a little more as he thinks about sweeping for a moment. He promptly returns focus to his peace and Seita's voice.  
  
*How long have you lived in Japan, Prince Yosho?  
  
"Almost 702 earth years."  
  
*In that time, how many funerals have you attended?  
  
"94."  
  
*How many of these friends and family died in old age?  
  
"About 75."  
  
*Do you think that is a lot for a single person to lose in a lifetime?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Your lifetime will last much longer, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You will likely attend many more funerals before having your own, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Has anything pained you more than the loss of friends and family over these centuries?  
  
Two more slow blinks than usual, but he answered calmly.  
  
"No."  
  
*Does it still hurt to lose all these friends, and to know you will lose more?  
  
"Yes. Sometimes."  
  
*Do you ever feel 'old', Prince Yosho?  
  
"Yes." A short strain strung itself around Yosho's throat.  
  
*Do you ever wish that you had a human lifespan?  
  
"Yes." The string tightened.  
  
*You are at peace Prince Yosho, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Good.  
  
*Have you ever wished to die, Prince Yosho?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*But you could never take your own life, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Have you ever imagined being vanquished in a battle?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do you still fantasize about this?  
  
"Yes. Sometimes." The hesitation was hardly noticeable.  
  
*Is this because you feel old?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Is this because you are tired of attending funerals?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do you every worry that a small part of this fantasy might make you lose a battle in life.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
*Do people at peace need fear?  
  
"No."  
  
*Are you at peace, Prince Yosho?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Have you ever worried that these fantasies of defeat could make you fight a battle below your ability?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do you think this could still happen?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Why?  
  
"Because I don't want to attend funerals anymore." Yosho's voice was soft as ancient hair on a baby's hand.  
  
*Are you at peace?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*When your lifespan is over Prince Yosho, will you be more at peace than you are now?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Does a part of you want your lifespan to be over?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Could a part of you make you lose a battle?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You were trained in the highest self-defense methods of Jurai, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Part of that included detecting poisons, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Are you tired of attending funerals?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Is it possible that your fantasy of being vanquished might make you lose a battle in real like, because you already feel old?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Would it be possible for someone to put poison in your tea?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Would it be possible for you to ignore it, because you already feel old?  
  
Yosho blinked slowly but did not open his eyes again.  
  
*You are at peace Prince Yosho, correct?  
  
"Y-Yes."  
  
*When your lifespan is over, will you feel more at peace than you do now?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*When your lifespan is over, will you have to attend any more funerals?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*If someone poisoned your tea, might your fantasies of defeat make you ignore a strange odor?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You are listening to my words Prince Yosho, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You are at peace and have no fear of evil, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*You feel old, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
Yosho's monotone answers seemed to hold steady, but by this they had clearly thinned out since the first introductory questions.  
  
*A part of you wants your lifespan to end, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*This part of you might cause you to ignore poison in your tea, correct?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Are you at peace, Prince Yosho?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do you wish to be more at peace?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Would Seita put poison in your tea?  
  
"Y-Yes."  
  
*Do you wish to be more at peace?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Would I put poison in your tea?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Would your fantasies of defeat make you ignore it?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do you wish to be more at peace?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Do you wish for our talk to help you?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*If the only way to do so would be to have this talk remain with you, without your remembering it, would you have it done?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*I will count up from zero and stop at 21. I will count out loud while you count to yourself. When I reach 21 you will no longer be at peace. This talk will remain with you, but you will not remember it. Is this what you want?  
  
"Yes."  
  
*Listen to the sound of my voice. Pay attention to my words. I will count out loud while you count to yourself. When I reach 21 you will no longer be at peace. This talk will remain with you, but you will not remember it.  
  
*Zero. No longer at peace.  
  
*1. No longer at peace.  
  
*2. No longer at peace.  
  
*3. No longer at peace.  
  
*4. No longer at peace.  
  
*5. No longer at peace.  
  
*6. No longer at peace.  
  
*7. No longer at peace.  
  
*8. No longer at peace.  
  
*9. No longer at peace.  
  
*10. No longer at peace.  
  
*11. No longer at peace.  
  
*12. No longer at peace.  
  
*13. No longer at peace.  
  
*14. No longer at peace.  
  
*15. No longer at peace.  
  
*16. No longer at peace.  
  
*17. No longer at peace.  
  
*18. No longer at peace.  
  
*19. No longer at peace.  
  
*20. No longer at peace.  
  
*21. No longer at peace.  
  
*You are no longer at peace Prince Yosho. This talk will stay with you, but you will not remember it.  
  
A thick weariness pulled at the muscles in Yosho's Jaw as he stared down at the sword, the sun was lower than it had been just before he'd raised his hand to, maybe, hurl his master key out away anywhere. He blinked roughly and considered what Seita had just said about watching him die 'like so many others'. Though the fear inspired by these last words made him feel like a child, he screamed within himself to pull forth the strength to strike back, to avenge those tormented by this lunatic, and avenge his insulted pursuit of enlightenment.  
  
"Those who have no appreciation for life-" he held the sword higher to proclaim roughly, yet without much projection, "-can have no appreciation for death."  
  
The sword remained silent, the air still. Yosho thought he heard chuckling in the distance and tried to prepare himself for another avalanche of hellish cackles. He sent off a whole hearted prayer to a Goddess he hoped he more than half believed in; may he not be turned into a madman, may he not live the rest of his life without the peace he'd worked 700 years to perfect. His arm shook, and the sight again made him wish he could strangle the contents of the sword. Seita's voice emanated from the hilt in an almost casual tone.  
  
"How right you are, 'grandfather'. Indeed, killing you will gradually become more insignificant once you are dead."  
  
"What?" The ghost of Yosho gasped.  
  
"Did you think that I was only out for your guilt and uncertainty? That's all well and good for an average day's work, but as you should have picked up, we've still got quite a personal debt to settle."  
  
Yosho thought he could see that same malicious grin pressed up against the tiny white window at the base of his sword.  
  
"Tell me grandfather, during the past week or so, did you ever make any tea that didn't quite live up to your usual standards?"  
  
The blood drained from Yosho's face so quickly he could feel it.  
  
"I have always been fascinated by assassins who kill with poisons, all the stealth, the creativity required. And for every being who claims to be immune, there's just that one they haven't come across yet."  
  
A semi-erotic sigh poured out of the hilt, once again shaking in Yosho's hand.  
  
"So this is what it feels like to gloat over an action rather than just an observation?  
  
"I like it well enough so far." Seita's voice offered a full second for a half grin.  
  
Whole body trembling to the rhythm of ground teeth, each of the rational voices in Yosho's mind screamed for attention like hysterical toddlers.  
  
"I used one of the best formula's I've come across in all my travels, your stomach wont be able to hold any food or water; you'll waste away between bouts of unconsciousness and violent nausea. The best part is that the effects are so subtle that medicine wont be able to detect any problems. It should be taking affect any moment now."  
  
The lunatic pricking behind Seita's voice threatened to puncture through his overacted overconfidence at any moment. The gems in the hilt were no longer catching the sun as Yosho could hardly keep his arm steady for the pain rising in his stomach.  
  
"Tell me grandfather, as a real warrior, does anybody ever ^truly^ feel honor when their killer takes extra care to use a favorite weapon? Probably not, right?"  
  
Yosho clutched his lower abdomen with his free hand and bent with a grunt.  
  
"Right."  
  
Trying to steady himself, Yosho knocked some pieces of stationary off his desk to dance with the dead leaves on the floor. He looked into the sword, and felt something akin to a large section of Seita's dimension opening up around him. Senses were wearing out, but he could still distinguish the tears between the sweat on his face.  
  
"I assure you grandfather, we are quite even now. Yours is, in fact, the first sentient life that I've directly destroyed. When I reexamine the technicalities of my methods I'll probably find a way to make this achievement more ^and^ less significant."  
  
"Wh-Why?!" The velvet wrapped iron in the voice of his killer finally crushed that last branch of Yosho's will. He might have taken comfort that he wasn't so vain as to wonder what his pitiful face looked like.  
  
Calm and confident as it was, Seita's voice held no comfort at all.  
  
"Grandfather Katshuhito of the Misaki Shrine, Yosho, favored prince and martyr of Jurai, if you still can't figure that out after all we've been through---then perhaps you never will."  
  
A strained gurgle, a dull thud, and the contrasting playful sound of a wooden toy sliding across the floor. Masaki shrine was peaceful again, comforting energy built from almost 700 years of prayer and meditation still thick as incense smoke. The surrounding trees absorbed and returned it, birds sang with the wind to decorate the expansive silence. Lower and more brilliant now, the sunset shone in through the missing door and onto the un-swept office floor. A white marble in Yosho's sword caught light. It glistened sickly yellow like a morsel of fat, speaking softly to anyone.  
  
"And perhaps I never did."  
  
***  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Eight is Martyr-  
  
-Part 3-  
  
Well enough to beg and hard enough to succeed-  
  
Measure up the nurse like a graven stone.  
  
Soon enough to confess and good enough to bleed-  
  
Bring down the witness like a graven stone.  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
The door to Washu's lab swung open, its metal handle banging a rattle off the wall. Tenchi managed to keep from startling too much tea into his lap, but the subsequent collapsing thud made everyone spill their share. A single explosion of footsteps rushed altogether over each other, hardly exchanging glances or sparing breaths to see the noise for themselves.  
  
A road-kill had been painted with magenta nail polish and dropped on a pile of rags, its pitiful crawling movements surely no more than an insect's last reflex. No one bent too close till it started rotting familiar. Filthy bruises smeared across the woman's face, cut by strands of hair caught in trickles of blood. Solid emeralds looked up and melted into sun- faded rubber. Her true unknowable age flashed between moan ground teeth as she crawled forward another few inches.  
  
"Washu!" Tenchi's initial shock broke first, sending him down on his knees, hands outstretched in complete and helpless compassion.  
  
"Miss Washu, are-are you alright?!" Mirror to his position, Aeka tried to take in the weight of the injury and the new size of the patient.  
  
A desperately strong hand struck out and clutched onto Tenchi's arm, he made a sound like a hiccup but quickly tensed to maintain both their balances. Washu coughed violently, matted hair shaking over her face and revealing more of her tattered clothing. Aeka shared shock again till she noticed more blood seeping through in other places. Shivering with Tenchi again, she craned her head to stare at the door. A thin sewage of smoke crept out over the top frame. Having seen the path to chaos, she jerked her face back to the source of reason.  
  
"Washu! ^What happened to Seita^?!" Aeka wailed desperation onto her battered face.  
  
The question, the stained hair wilting into her mouth, both were ignored easily enough. Washu looked up at Tenchi, turning more pity than a child or crone could conjure into more terror than an animal could conceive.  
  
"Yo-sho-" She croaked out and crumpled lower from the exertion.  
  
Positioning herself with a hollow slap to the floor, Aeka hollered and hauled back what was left.  
  
"Yosho?! What about Yosho?! Please Washu, tell us!"  
  
A harsh whisper almost decayed into a gurgle beneath the animal as it began hitting the road again.  
  
"Hurry!"  
  
Tenchi sprang up and tried to direct his panic into a life preserver.  
  
"Quick Aeka, help me get her to the couch. There's a first aid kit in the closet and-"  
  
"No, don't worry about---help Yosho." Washu began coughing under the Princess's hands. Tenchi heard the strain in speaking, feared the same in breathing.  
  
"Aeka, you and Ryoko stay with Washu. I've got to get to the shrine!" Tenchi directed with moderately calm hysteria. He whirled around to where he had last seen Ryoko to find a fallen cup and a carpet stain.  
  
***  
  
Silhouette outlined in light, a chameleon revealed like a freshly cut paper doll, regaining color and volume at its leisure. Seita walked out from the darkened corner of Yosho's office, taking a dignified step with each relaxing breath. He closed his eyes, pulling arched fingers apart and lowering them with all the grace of a noble machine trying to hide its rust. Smoothing itself back behind his ears, a platinum glare passed over his hair as he stepped into the light around the fallen priest. With eyes opening to the change, glass black faded into steel blue business to suit. Another breath stretched the seams and sagged the jacket into a thin wide- sleeved shirt, collecting on his thighs and waving off his wrists when he crouched down for a closer look. About to trace the crumbled clothing on Yosho's back, Seita's hand reconsidered and rested thoughtfully against his cheek instead.  
  
"All that time spent opening your consciousness, renouncing your mind to the universe."  
  
Still nostalgic for seduction, he pressed and rested his soft cheek a little more against his hand.  
  
"So much space covered and released to free you from---'mundane' perception. A greater peace, and a greater comfort, melting into the sea of your ancestors and idols. Simply abandon all your instincts have brought you to find what brought you your instincts."  
  
Seita paused, folding his arms over his knees and resting his chin on them.  
  
"More than ever, open to greet the great objectives. More than ever, open to suggestion. None the wiser: while the 'less enlightened' pined for the power they would lose---the wise man merely lusted for the peace he would receive. None the wiser: so goes the misers."  
  
Best in show, brightest blue ribbon buttons traveled and savored over the labored rises on Yosho's body till they rested on his sword.  
  
"I was unable to harvest mass apathy from you, but now you've still heightened my silo. It seems my hypothesis was correct; the ambitious pursuit of enlightenment is the pursuit of escape, a quest for complete peace is a quest for death. Where I cannot drain the appreciation of life, I can swell the desire for death."  
  
Brow thickening, weighing his face down till his chin, lips, and nose all dragged themselves over his forearm till only the forehead could stall. He spoke to himself again, but only for the truly interested audience this time.  
  
"I have planted the seeds in your family, and I have severed the roots in you, let us see if The Tree responds now."  
  
Raising himself up on a clever and joyless smile, Seita walked towards the sword with even heavier feet. He looked down at the white marble he'd projected into and after-tasted a small sound of amusement.  
  
"I didn't know I'd get the opportunity to give you such a false hope, but you had such true faith."  
  
A thought-pause hummed his throat and scratched his chin. A head-tilt brought the white marble to life. It rolled beneath the hilt's skin like a maggot, birthing itself at the opposite end and floating upward to tall eyelevel.  
  
"Should I still serve them a sentence, a cage to rattle---a hole to fill?" His mouth pulled to the side in a failed half-smile.  
  
"No, little to say now for reassurance---hide it or hide from it---prisons-- -just let the heroes feel they are safe, and just let the villains think they are right."  
  
"^Reassurance^."  
  
All in a brooding hush, Seita's thoughts steamed out and corroded to a head. He looked down and drug his fingertips over each other, two shiny blue trains passing back and forth till the sharpened engines had to test their strength.  
  
"Reassurance. Safe. Right." Looking up at the marble again, the indigo ice balm evaporated from his lips as he bit down on the bottom. Matching eye shadow and nail polish disappeared like novelty ink.  
  
"Silence the enemy and feel safe. Speak to the master and know you are right. Reassure. Invert and fester, but by all means reassure." The tiny white sphere caught light and began losing volume into a tiny white circle.  
  
"Safe, and speak to the master. Silenced, and speak to the master." Voice reaching a serious monotone, the private monologue ended on a fingertip. Seita wiped saliva off his tongue and wiped dust off his marble.  
  
Hands already behind him, he waited as it grew like a white balloon filling with slugs. Shrinking and stretching into shape, an albino tadpole formed tiny appendages. Bones grew into place beneath the doughy skin, and a frog matured again into a faceless ape huddling in the cold. Not allowed or not remembering to blink during the accelerating growth, Sayta stared, his lower lip drooping slightly. Soon a hairless doll dipped in creamy plaster and soon again to life-size.  
  
The baby's head shrunk and its body swelled. It turned in levitating vitro to face Seita with a bowed head, hands and feat still bound together in sleeping prayer. Fat rolled into every appendage. Fingers fisted excessive then stubby, its stomach became bloated, drooping over its smooth sexless crotch. Breasts without nipples do the same; tear shaped bags of soft lard are ready to slide off at any moment. Conversely, the face began to shrink, its features shifting and smoothing over in more subtle deformity.  
  
Thin hair, clear as cleaning bristles, wormed out at shoulder length. The mounds of fat surrounding its limbs glistened with a clear film, cellulite dimples fell in and boils rose up with light gray puss just below the surface. Seita presses his lips together and takes a deep breath. A tiny string of saliva wiggled at the end of its lolling mouth as it looked up with bleached-out pupils. Vacancy further evicted any lights that could have been left on in the doll's face, impairment obvious without color or apparent reception. It stares at him like television till his eyes narrow.  
  
"If oblivion were entertaining a form, it would glamour itself in the blur between pity and fear."  
  
He spoke formally for the audience behind him through their reflections on the doll's expansive surface. Ready to wink at or banish any who shifted in their seat, he shook and smiled into its eyes.  
  
"And it would speak the end of mimicry."  
  
It lolled its head forward then up and to the side. Trapped in its throat a deaf child cried out shrill pleading gibberish. Obesity-crippled arms twitched like a dying bird. This movement caused a few boils to rupture and run as heavy flesh folds over. Neither closing his eyes nor moving his mouth, Seita inhaled the personal apparition with all the miserable arrogance of a man searching for even higher dignity in an elite river of sewage.  
  
"^Formal is vanity, vanity is failure, and failure is apathy---proper apathy^." His whisper shook over arched fingers pressing into his lips.  
  
"^So if you please, I thank you^." He offered a timid bow and calmed himself, shoulders straight, hands at chest level, and voice polishing swords with velvet.  
  
"You don't mind that I speak for you---to speak to you---do you?"  
  
The doll looked at something over Seita's right shoulder before its head became too heavy to ignore somethin on his knees. It seemed capable only of a voice trapped in the waves between a sick child's yawn and a ghostly wail.  
  
"^Do you^?"  
  
"This grotesque form is almost more than beautiful, and almost meaningless. This is what you want." Plainly stated, he allowed an even blink.  
  
"^What you want^." The doll replied the same way during another random head movement, while Seita looked over at Yosho for a thoughtful moment.  
  
"He got his peace, do I get my power?"  
  
"^My power^."  
  
"Yes, I know, but do I get it, or at least closer to it?" A breath for confidence came out in a rehearsed anti-faux-humble acceptance speech. "I've measured a new milestone. I have turned insight into insurrection. I have inverted the sanctuary of transcendence. The priest's patrons and the prince's idols must both be already honing a taste for my blood...yet I can already taste the vomit that will be in his mouth."  
  
"^Mowwwwwwth^."  
  
The doll's mouth hangs farther open as its face shakes with a silent hiccup. A second throaty convulsion oozed a large mouthful of watered down milk and gristle to shine and streak a path over its chin and down its belly. A few small chunks caught in the breast crevices. It looked straight into Seita's eyes with vacant playfulness, making a suckling kissy- face.  
  
"Hmm." He raised an eyebrow of well-planned mild intrigue with another turn toward the fallen prince. Something loathsome twinkled vainly in his eye and he lightly pursed his own lips.  
  
"Probably risked material contact enough times today."  
  
"^Today^."  
  
"Yes, time, I know. Can't play forever or win the game hiding in time-out."  
  
"^Owwwwwwwwwwwwt^." The doll's head rolled back with a zombie's surreal echo.  
  
Clean features frowned then scowled intensely enough for another paint job, sucking a vile accusation into every pore to breath back a controlled stream of fire.  
  
"Is that what you think? That I would ^invert and pervert the principle of the treatment^, then just reveal the placebo and abort another replacing experiment? ^Revoke my grant again^?! Well here!"  
  
The fabric hanging leisurely from Seita's torso contracted in a hungry reflex, clutching his body so tightly that it stretched into a formal gown and squeezed and curved him into a feminine figure. Dignified hair jumped out to the side in a frenzy and fell back again in two long braids. A puff of glitter and a blue cone hat with complementing lace at the tip fell onto his head. Paint and hormones swelled and smeared through his face till the transformation was less than perfect completely by choice. He finished the job smartly with a pose of ladylike indignity.  
  
"Why don't I just wake the prince with a kiss?" Faeries caught the elegant spread of his arm and glided him over to Yosho's side. "Test and waste your faith in me again, keep up with his story for ^another^ 700 years as he rewrites it backwards, sideways, both ways, but never ^your ways^! Then maybe find out what I'm---really---made of!"  
  
The princess's pert breasts heaved as her dainty fingers strangled the air at her sides. The doll shifted its arms slightly, making a sickly wet sound. It looked at Yosho, the ceiling, the desk, and offered a milky string of drool in Seita's direction. With a voice slightly deeper and resonant of his favored hisses, it answered him.  
  
"^Made oooooooooof^."  
  
A thoughtless fade took Seita out of better than drag and back into perfect drugs. Another breath and he was calm, another breath and he was smiling, and another breath brought him a controlled fit of excessively therapeutic giggles. Once his inside joke subsided he replaced it with the sound savored in his footfalls, slow rubber two-taps against the wood floor. The doll lolled its head again while he inflated his lungs and a new, wider smile.  
  
"^Nothing^." Seita offered his sinister velvet, continuing his approach confidently despite the lack of change in the doll's expression.  
  
"^What we are, what we create. We are what we create. 'So---what?^'"  
  
Less than half a meter from the doll, he stopped and bent to what would be eye level when its head finally stopped lolling about. Intense blue met empty white at a slight angle, but both locked. The doll closed its mouth and swallowed, making a tiny bubble at the corner of its lips. Seita leaned progressively closer, a tyrant selling himself to his shadow's greed, ravenous to hear his own thoughts spoken with all the pomp of clever cruelty.  
  
"So I understand, that we don't want to 'ask' and 'know' anymore---^because we're bloated^," he jabbed his right index finger into the dolls immense belly, eliciting a moan of thick and erotic labor pains, "with asking and knowing."  
  
Close enough now to taste its breath, he continued in softer so as more perverse, barely audible over another deep response to his subtly twisting finger.  
  
"We're bloated---and immune."  
  
"Immuuuuuuuuuuuuuuune." The doll's voice gurgled out a little more to glisten the trail down its body.  
  
Barely-living white still stared blindly into post-repulsed blue. A single word, from the right poet, could make a threat seem so romantic.  
  
"Immortal."  
  
He kissed the doll, withdrawing his hand and holding the other behind his back while he bent into it. The soft and empty face received the vulgar exploration passively, all the while content to roll its head accordingly with his movements. After a few rough rotations and a tiny almost-gyration, he withdrew. The dolls expression remained unchanged for being so close to someone turned from two statues into one, melted, compressed, tribute and warning.  
  
"^Immortalllllllll^." Fat gasped, rolling its head back to look at the ceiling and choke on itself. Seita stood straight again with a step back and a look outside.  
  
"I'll say. I will. I'll get there-I'll get them---I've got a new vehicle to try out."  
  
Post-ventriloquist, The Ghost of Madness exorcised its name under both breaths:  
  
"^Owwwt^."  
  
Right hand man closed his eyes with a tired smirk for milder exhaustion.  
  
"Yes. Yes. Back to work."  
  
Passing through the empty doorframe on hesitant steps meant for leisure, subtly up-righting the best posture for anyone, Seita still slouched ever so slightly as his consuming throat stole a bit of breath of relief. The doll lolled its head into a white residue then a forgettable glare of light.  
  
"^Work^."  
  
Seita imitated its voice well enough, checking both feet one at a time till, for the first time in some time, he spoke again to himself rather than for himself.  
  
"Business is booming. But, the self-employed may yet lose their competitive edge."  
  
Heavy feet savored the stairs down and into the courtyard, letting his shoulders slump then bounce back up with each step. Not yet ready to look ahead, he turned back. His shadow stretched across the small building, bent on the stairs and imploded into the open office. Perfect moment for a better observation; but not even half a gesture. He accepted a calm horizon gaze with a dignified posture and a straight face that surrendered one eyebrow after the other.  
  
Ryoko floated at the far corner of the shrine, face deathly calm and poorly lit by the sunset behind her. Warrior fingertips curled when she caught his attention. She straightened her neck with a breath, pulling her hands from her invisible pistols and crossing them behind her. This perfect imitation of his preferred stance amplified her slender figure and explosive hair; a palm tree's shadow nearly combined with the former guest's to form a diagonal black path across the shrine. Wind moved leaves across it.  
  
Closing this short distance took Seita two and a half steps and no blinks.  
  
"Don't. Move."  
  
Restrained rage carried just enough distance in the empty air, but he was already there, line unbroken, Ryoko's hair made the perfect spotlight even as she tilted her head forward to cut eyes.  
  
"You're missing it you know." Seita took in the foreground and the background with a soft appreciation, waiting for the foreground to turn back and notice.  
  
In a quick movement she snapped her head around, visibly tensed, and turned back. All reprimands for taking her eyes off him roared, but she managed to muzzle them. Blue calm continued to look everywhere through her.  
  
"Missing what?" Darkened dry, she held the spit down with her teeth.  
  
"The sunset of course, its particularly nice from up here."  
  
Ryoko narrowed her eyes at him, sharpening them further when he focused the softest on the foreground.  
  
"You know, you're really quite a vision, floating there in the sunset." He grinned almost bashfully, blinking and looking down for a moment.  
  
Ryoko almost gave away a flash of terrified revulsion, but aborted it with a slaughter glare that tightened her whole face.  
  
"Sorry, the most common atmosphere to use, and still the hardest to use well." Romance began to fade from Seita's face, his co-star and audience clearly unimpressed. He peacefully relaxed out any humanity with half a sigh.  
  
"I see you're not dressed for battle."  
  
"What'd be the point?" Ryoko asked without a shred of self-pity.  
  
Pleasantly surprised, Seita up-chuckled a smile.  
  
"At least you're learning something."  
  
"Yeah. Great." Sarcasm held the gory frontline. "Now where is he?"  
  
"Oh." Plain and simple worked up a voice to outdo any excess of confidence.  
  
"Well, if you're referring to priest Katshuhito, you're likely to get only a few basic answers," he took a moment to watch his little nail dimple his thumb, "however, if you mean Prince Yosho, then, depending on who you ask, you might get some seriously conflicting-"  
  
"Answer me, Seita." The interruption verbally sneered into his flashy evasions, boring out his name like a carbuncle, yet she seemed to need a little more boldness to look past him. "Is he still in there?"  
  
"Who?" He resumed his approach with reverted confidence.  
  
"Tell me. Now." Ryoko's tone went throaty with resentment.  
  
No matter what was pumping it up, the lump in her throat had always felt the same. It had been strangling and nauseating and humiliating at worst, but all in all she could at least tell herself, remember it as only a rock. Now, as Seita pursed his lips to wet them without showing his tongue, it was different. Folding one arm across his midsection, resting his elbow on it, and gently pinching his sinus, it was different. Looking tired, it was different. Crawling his eyes back up her body and down her throat, it was different. Tasting new inspiration there, blending a special croon into his voice to overshadow the abrasion in his face, it was so much worse.  
  
"Do you really think another session would help?"  
  
Ryoko waited to feel her nails digging into her palms, hoped her arms weren't trembling from the effort, and plugged her scream behind a tongue tip ready to be bitten off. But she wouldn't draw her sword, and she wouldn't cry yet. Pleading to the bitter end she wouldn't yet.  
  
*I'm sorry, Tenchi.  
  
*I don't think I can do this.  
  
*Please. Please, PLEASE don't do it again! You horrible---miserable---  
  
If she'd had another quarter second to think on it, she wouldn't have given up the other three widening her eyes on a memory. A good thing she withdrew her tongue before she knew what to do with it. She really tried to believe this time that her eyes could cut into him, butcher him like a sick runt.  
  
"I'm not the who needs help."  
  
The sheer coyness made him stare back, lowering his hand, giving away his need for defense, opening up to the rest of her attack.  
  
"Even when you're sleeping," Ryoko continued with a significantly more nervous delivery of cruel insight, "you can't forget how miserable you are."  
  
The whole bowl of confidence, and a small helping of color drained from Seita's face, the new surrealism of it layering over that morning; her second failed assassination, his interrupted dream.  
  
He quickly matched the rage, shining blue-steal to gleaming pure-gold. She heard his chuckle then, grotesque, and loud enough to be as obvious a projection as the changing color of his clothing. Indigo expired into ghostly gray, to bright sliver, to polished ivory. The fabrics clung to his body like melting plastic over a slender action figure. Six extra Seita's, feet all glued to the same spot, bent and contorted around their original like anemone tentacles, their faces writhing like the oversexed undead, mouths and eyes writhing and gasping into oblivion.  
  
"How perceptive. How perceptive?"  
  
The center bettered double meaning, in a sharp whisper. Each word stretched his torso like vanilla taffy till head and shoulders were level with the floating woman. His arms melted inward while the extras danced their hands to smear their faces in a perpetual group nervous breakdown.  
  
Still feeding off his initial reaction, Ryoko looked the new illusion up and down with brutal criticism. She managed to balance his new pose with simplicity.  
  
"I think the big giant head suited you better."  
  
Seita sliced his face open with his most intense and malicious smile, the matching chuckle echoed in Ryoko's mind like a fist full of broken glass. Her next breath shook in her throat, and she hid another curse at herself for playing tough when she had sworn to play cool.  
  
"M-maybe you're out of ideas, after such a busy day."  
  
The chuckle snapped off, and the smile deflated. He searched her expression. There was more depth to his eyes, but she was instantly reminded of how Kagato looked at her when conducting an experiment. For a moment it seemed someone was accelerating the sunset, but the surrounding scenery faded to a black too complete for any earth night. She refused to accept failure, would not show her terror.  
  
"Interesting that you would say so." Perversely soothing tones took control of his voice. His surreal bust broke away in the center, discarding the copies into darkness like leftover love-me petals, inflating a new and normally proportioned body, dressed in casual black slacks and burgundy shirt, no tie, barely dress shoes. A leather recliner formed just in time to catch him, Ryoko glanced and saw its reflection behind her. No sign of interest.  
  
"You see, that's precisely the theme I was considering when you came to ask me such a vague question. And don't worry, 'he' is alive, and I'll tell you where 'he' is, after-"  
  
"NOW!" Ryoko floated forward with fists at each side, forgetting or discarding, any previous attempt at a new approach. Seita half-grinned away his annoyance.  
  
"'After'---you hear my proposal. However long that takes, I assure you ^this^ approach will take longer."  
  
She crossed her arms and doubled her glare.  
  
"Please have a seat, I'll try to be brief."  
  
One glance, the coach resembled a bucket of filth, and she looked back with a thick shroud of impatience waiting over apprehension.  
  
"Alright then. Now, you mentioned me 'running out of ideas'. It might happen, but I'm not worried about exhausting my---creativity, any time soon. 'Time' in fact, is what concerns me."  
  
A wrinkle of confusion worked its way into her confrontation. His proposal continued with less flamboyant smoke and more focused steam.  
  
"You see, whoever, whatever you and your little family may think I am, the only important issue is that I am not entirely immortal. As I explained shortly after working my way into Tenchi's home, I don't age when I'm inside oblivion, but what I didn't explain was that I need to do more than simply 'exist' in there to strengthen my abilities."  
  
Eyes closed for a pausing breath, another wrinkle softened Ryoko's face to see him actually need a moment to collect his thoughts.  
  
"In truth, I didn't even give a quarter of the explanation for all that I am, and all that I might be. I say 'might' because I'm not yet sure if I'll be able to see even the first auras of my goal, even with a Jurain lifespan, or two."  
  
Threads of spite wormed into Seita's throat and eyes, he looked away from Ryoko just as anger flew over her own face. He arched his fingers in his lap, moving the tips apart and together again slightly.  
  
"Ryoko, I sincerely want to know; why do you think I go through so much trouble to confront people with such ^unpleasant^ perception projections?" He waited a moment and another before looking up, only to see her hardened into an even deeper silence. Accepting, perhaps expecting this, he spoke at his hands again.  
  
"If you think I'm trying to gain power over others, you're completely mistaken. And if you believe I simply crave the singular looks of terror I can inspire, you'd be only half-right. Dismiss and dismantle me as 'insane'; but if that were the case I wouldn't still smell so much confusion---so much curiosity."  
  
He grinned to himself before continuing.  
  
"Even though I speak frankly now, I'm sure you still see me as 'The Ghost of Madness'. Indeed I am. Yes. In. Deed. I am as much the nemesis of mental prosperity as such a thing can exist."  
  
Back on track, his next breath served mostly as inflation.  
  
"In the scheme of things used to be another rather simple and expendable life form. It was only by ^embracing oblivion^ that I was able to catch even a delirium spark of what I could become." His voice tensed back with its manic sort of reverence. Ryoko instantly felt a small but all too recognizable uneasiness as he raised a coin-sized white hole up between weakly clenched hands.  
  
"It is more than I told you that first day, but perhaps not more than you could understand." He grinned ironically at the tiny portal then Ryoko. "But more than I could explain after such a 'busy day'."  
  
His amusement dissipated, replaced by a seriousness eased under gentle sincerity.  
  
"It is the heart, the ^God^ of what I am, yet it has given me nothing, it only enhances the abilities I already have." The portal blinked closed. Ryoko regained some composure.  
  
"Now consider myself; a simple humanoid, ^poorly^ mutated with the abilities of a mass." He severed his left hand with his right little nail, a razor through hosiery. They grew back together inverted. Two right hands touched point to thumb then faded right. He looked up.  
  
"Now imagine your-self." Gesturing towards her with palms upturned, she noticed how increasingly plastic his thin, vein-less forearms were looking. Her anxiety was quickly distracted back. "A masterful creation."  
  
The suggestion raised Ryoko's eyes for a fraction of a moment before they hardened and hardened again.  
  
"Please, if you cannot imagine, then at least consider. If you cannot consider, merely ask: 'would I like to be invulnerable, would I enjoy a limitless new form of transportation'. Just take a moment, please."  
  
Ryoko's anger shivered out along her arms and down the base of her neck. Stoic resistance pressed down on Seita's words like a brick upon delicate insect antennae. He tried again, same voice, eyes passively looking over his fingers as they performed again, making slow kaleidoscope imitations, this time without any tricks.  
  
"I've little doubt that ^any^ sentient being could be accelerated through time in 'my' dimension. I still marvel that no others have made it through the initial---'discomfort' and approached me as a clone, an apprentice, or a successor."  
  
Ryoko stifled a gasp of revolted disbelief, turning it into a sickly gulp.  
  
"Precisely." He tried and half succeeded to keep hisses subtle. "As I mentioned before: with a time changing goal; who can predict my distance, even with an extended lifespan. But 'my' is merely a single end, a different set of means is a different story. There's no need to 'become me' to obtain power equal, and more than likely greater than mine. You are nothing if not resourceful, and I am sure that oblivion---that whatever power fuels my pursuits, could do the same for you."  
  
Shifting a little in his seat, Seita un-designed his fingers, flattened them over his thighs, and examined her silence.  
  
"If you are still too battle ready to envision your future success, then remember our first session. Again."  
  
During many portions of his speech, she had given hard glances to either side of herself, trying to force out the surrounding darkness. Almost ready for a sake wish, this new argument rekindled her rage and snapped up a murderous glance. He met it, glad as ever to see his effect.  
  
"Think about Tenchi. This young man who, I'm sure, is now equally bent on the angle of my destruction. Your devotion to him must surely stem from something more deeply ingrained than an attraction---for the notable level of Jurai power he can conjure---when so inclined."  
  
Experienced fists, unused to hiding, buried themselves in the sleeves of her kimono while Seita returned to watching his fingers, the kaleidoscope raised higher this time.  
  
"Yes, summoning the 'wings' is a rare thing among Jurains, certainly among half-breeds. Meaning no offense of course; he most likely has more current potential than you or any of the others."  
  
Ryoko cursed inward; he probably wouldn't be able to speak so softly if he didn't assume she was listening.  
  
"Yet, his power is only relevant here in how it relates to you, in how you relate to him. You are no longer a tool, but you are still a warrior, and now the role of 'guardian' seems even more appealing. As I recall, the only thing that could quell the rather extensive rage you attacked me with-- -was Tenchi.  
  
However bad this condescent was, it couldn't have been worse than meeting his eyes. She made herself sure.  
  
"Just think; how much stronger a protector could you become? How much safer would Tenchi and his family be if you never had to worry about being ^overpowered^ by another Kagato---by another Seita?"  
  
Extra delicacy stressed the term to its limits.  
  
"Surely you never wanted to be just another 'normal earth girl'. And I doubt even that you'll be satisfied with your power 'if' Tenchi gives you your other gems back. Why do you think I am approaching you with this offer? Recruiting a backup plan is no flattery, but after all these centuries I have come across few mortal beings that could ever carry the flame as well as you could."  
  
Seita's fingers began to detach themselves, floating up to form snowflakes, spider webs, and vulgar stain-glass abstracts. He spoke with more intensity, clearly knowing that Ryoko was watching the display and not likely to respond.  
  
"It is you, Ryoko, your very design that makes you the perfect candidate. Realize. Accept. Down to the cell, perhaps further, your body was constructed to tap into and wield ^power^."  
  
He slithered a grin around his finger dance over her face guard.  
  
"Do you think Washu designed such capacities, such talents, to have ^tea parties^ ? For a 'daughter' why not make a quality lab assistant with a perfectly bulbous brain?"  
  
A quick chuckle shook in his throat. Acrobatic fingers dismantled their interpretive play and resumed their positions as he crossed his arms with a satisfied breath.  
  
"She obviously didn't want a successor...or any competition." He smiled through that she was once again illuminated by the sunset.  
  
"But there's really no competition, is there? The professor could not contain me, and only your attacks have even sparked my interest. Clearly none were as qualified as you to rescue the old prince."  
  
They locked eyes. Holding back, but hardening breaths were growing impossible. She finally found a cheap distraction with the pain in her hands. A blood-curdle passed through her briefly at a narrowing in Seita's characteristically calm stare. He looked at her slightly sideways and curled an index finger over his lips.  
  
"Oh," he spoke again in mocking seduction, "I almost forgot. There ^is^ still some competition to be considered. Tell me Ryoko, while you're here, where are Tenchi---and Aeka?"  
  
*She...  
  
*Damn him! Damn him! Damn him! Damn her! Damn HIM! Damn EVERYTHING!  
  
*NO! I can't lose it all now!  
  
*I ^can't^ let him ^win^!  
  
Intense and entire mental commands pulled her wide-eyed gaze downward, but she quickly glared back under her eyelids. Seita would and did only smile, closing his eyes with a serene breath.  
  
"My dear student, that problem could be an easy first success. Your own under-exploited capacity for perception-projection---with a few hints, fewer hopes, and better faith you could take Tenchi on glorious vacations at the blink of a lovely eye. You could almost literally ^give him the world^."  
  
An enormous star mural stippled behind him, making way for a Tenchi and a Ryoko to laugh together in mid-flight. Making the adjacent wall, a romance and a tranquility watched over them watching the sunset from a cliff face. Fading in across from that was an enlarged close up photo taken directly from Ryoko's mind. She looked at herself held lovingly in Tenchi's arms, wanting to scream in a million different ways.  
  
First admiring his development, Seita glanced over and half-grinned at Ryoko's mixed horror.  
  
"Whatever Tenchi desired, you could make him believe he already had. You could ^be^ his world, Ryoko. You could change yourself to anything and ^everything^ he wanted."  
  
As he spoke the pirate in the oversized photo faded into more elegant, then even more sensual clothing. Her skin wavered out of tans. Hair changed shape, style, and color; starting black to brittle platinum, and slowly to a deep familiar purple.  
  
"You could be his dream."  
  
Her photo's body began to change.  
  
"By the grace of ^your^ will ^his^ heart---could posses euphoria's maidenhead."  
  
The Tenchi portrayed in the photo became no less happy with the more delicate and formally dressed fantasy in his arms.  
  
"Even if you had to---'replace' something."  
  
Ryoko sunk her fingers into her skull, screaming to the heavens too loudly to see them.  
  
"SHUUUUUUT! UUUUUUUUUP!"  
  
The scenery around them returned to nothing, absorbing even the coaches as Seita stood in dignified patience to what would have been rejection to anyone else. Ryoko swallowed her pain, preferring to gag rather than cough. She resigned onto the solicitor, not bothering to straiten out of a pouncing stance. Small globs of energy glowed between her claws.  
  
"How to use this new capacity would be, as I mentioned, your decision. Feel free to suggest one of your own ideas and I will gladly see if it could be carried out." The slightest glare of agitation shone through a frayed edge in Seita's velvet presentation.  
  
"Where's Yosho?" Spit wasn't supposed to catch light in a vacuum.  
  
"Just a moment now, I've not yet finished expla-"  
  
"WHERE!?"  
  
Ryoko's hands rose up slightly, and settled again by force. Breaths would not slow the race and eyes would not starve the fire till someone was a smoke stain.  
  
In the meantime someone looked down at her blankly. A moment of contemplation included a glance up to both sides, a softened face, and an apologetic moment of understanding.  
  
"Hm. I assumed this setting would provide less distraction, how thoughtless of me. Situational anxiety is bad enough without environmental stress."  
  
The Misaki shrine faded into view again; an eclipse ending just in time for sunset. Vain business was standing slightly below Ryoko again. After scanning the area without any head movements, she glared down at him, the energy still ready to burst from her hands.  
  
"I should have known," Seita continued, "that an 'empty' room would only bring back unpleasant memories."  
  
He looked out toward the last rays of the sun, calmly unconcerned but more likely oblivious to Ryoko's struggle into breath and out of her weapons.  
  
"But on that note you should be comforted; once you've mastered and allied with true emptiness---even the greatest genius in the universe won't be able to construct a prison strong enough to hold you."  
  
His voice solidified again, and he met her re-focusing rage with his own consuming depth.  
  
"I don't think I need to tell you how rare an opportunity this is, to be offered a chance at a transcendence beyond anything that old man could conceive. If you could set aside your disagreements with my means, set aside the all too natural but ultimately unnecessary fear of oblivion's embrace-"  
  
Ryoko felt herself begin to black out, but a dry and surreal nausea stabbed terrified adrenaline into every cell of her body. She knew a portal had opened up behind her. It hurt to whirl around so quickly while forming her sword, but it provided a small feeling of readiness, particularly when Seita's head emerged from the door precisely as she'd expected.  
  
"-I could begin to endow you with an understanding of ^everything^."  
  
The stressed word hissed in unnatural grandeur, washing over Ryoko like a post-sexual lust. Seita completed the offer just as his bare toes curled out over the edge of the portal. The excess of white made her glad for the imminent loss of sun, as she was too horrified to squint. He stood there with his arms out in a slight welcoming, dressed in loose white clothing, facing out with significantly less feminized and polished features. His hairless scalp caught the glow of her sword. Knowing she was as sober as she'd ever be, silent terror screamed in for Tenchi, then anyone.  
  
"You see Ryoko, when faced with the 'blank'---'truth'---you're already holding up better than most anyone could. I'm offering you a chance at an achievement to surpass anything ever possible in or around existence. Don't flatter my 'cruel experiments' with your fear, come with your sword and take the trophy, the right to one day breathe ^infinity^ and ^perfection^."  
  
Seita eagerly crossed one arm across his midsection and balanced his other elbow upon it, holding his hand out to would-be harmlessness. Wide sleeves over thin arms dangled in a breeze.  
  
"Come inside Ryoko, understand what makes you so afraid and you will surpass it. At least spend a moment, go back and never return if you choose, but a moment, embrace oblivion for just a moment."  
  
Easy to guess what had sharpened the gleam in his eyes, what was hiding in plain sight, easy and impossible to trust. The blue struck her like any clear liquid in her mother's lab: water or deadly chemical? Every instinct screamed that she was still facing something worse than Kagato could've dreamed himself into, however, the emotion, the thought, the intangible aura of ^something^ was imploding behind his impossibly peaceful gaze. A last grasp of defiance was too small to announce itself but just big enough to be noticed.  
  
"You're obviously crazy," she stated simply with a pause only for herself, "but if you think I'd consider going in ^there^ with ^you^---well then you're just plain ^stupid^."  
  
Seita's hand retracted over the other side of his midsection, and he looked down at the shrine below Ryoko's feet. His gaze traveled out and down towards the house as mature but overt disappointment lulled out of him.  
  
"I see. You are still afraid of becoming an extension of another's will, again. I understand, of course, as well as any could."  
  
He turned back to stare with a cruel imitation of melancholy. She ground her teeth again and let her sword dissipate, responding with her own imitation of a dignified guard.  
  
"I doubt it."  
  
To her near shock, Seita did not chuckle, or even smirk, yet he gradually displayed newfound capacity for a lack of expression.  
  
"In that case, let me explain to you why I needed to come up here to have a little talk with the prince and the priest."  
  
Ryoko's brow clenched slightly.  
  
"Don't concern yourself with the ineffectiveness of his disguise. The point is that Yosho's decision to chase you down to this planet eventually affected me almost as much as it affected you. I had very complex and important plans for Jurai, and he inadvertently aborted ^them^ when he abandoned ^it^. He has helped to make amends for this though, and I have little more use of him or the family he has started here."  
  
He leveled his gaze and allowed a thin sheet of sinister velvet to drag over his face.  
  
"You might be interested to know that I did visit Kagato shortly after Yosho secured his martyrdom on Jurai, after all he was, once again, an almost equal agent of loss for me. I merely looked in on him at first, not wanting to be 'how intrusive' till I at least decided 'how upset' he was."  
  
A quarter smile wiggled at the side of his mouth.  
  
"There was some respectful curiosity regarding why he would be so anxious as to risk damaging his favorite weapon."  
  
Overloading layers of golden rage went unnoticed while he continued, speaking down into his hand and a holographic replica of The Great Tree.  
  
"He was naturally impatient for your return and his inability to locate you- --had predictable influence. This aside; by merely listening to a few oral journal entries and observing the material covering his work room I discovered something interesting."  
  
Seita looked up from the tree as it disappeared.  
  
"It seems Kagato actually believed the Jurain myth about Tsunami, that there was actually a being of immense power lurking in their great tree, that it possessed a supremely powerful ship and could travel between all dimensions of existence.  
  
"I'm not sure how cognizant you were of this rather inconvenient mission of yours, but that was the booty Kagato wanted on Jurai."  
  
Ryoko felt half a moment of murderous impulse when Seita rubbed his nose in a particularly mortal fashion. He looked towards the sky and spoke in near frustrated curiosity.  
  
"Now, in seeing the depth of planning and study he went through, I began to wonder why he believed the key to the Jurai power lied in their icon. We were both men of science for as long as we knew each other, and I thought he'd surely have better results imitating frequencies than tracing colloquies.  
  
"Needless to say I was intrigued, so I decided to further test the range of existence I could explore through oblivion." A significant lowness curled around Seita's throat as he continued this new explanatory story.  
  
"I have given up the search and begun it again many times, discovering a number of 'interesting' things between the tedium. But, seemingly by accident, I did at last find something. And I did at least find someone."  
  
Arched fingers provided a picture viewer that soon opened like a flower hinged at the thumb tips. Inside grew the head and shoulders of an exotic woman, her gold hair cascading around formal facial markings and eyes too important for one color.  
  
"Ryoko, there is a rage that can surpass yours. No, not surpass, rather ^defy^. Yes, this---this 'being' defied everything the teachers told me I knew. But her ship didn't look Jurain, and indeed she certainly didn't act like their 'benevolent' Goddess."  
  
Seita hugged himself and chuckled. The model picture looked up for the pirate's thoughts.  
  
"Oh my, I still have trouble adequately making-eloquent our encounter," he began dressing the solemn nostalgia, "there's really no way to describe the fury she ^became^ when I invited myself into her chambers, carrying myself the way I do." He tilted his head at Ryoko in a weak joke, ignoring the increased absence of color in her face.  
  
"Like a new kind of instinct, her condensing emotion was clearly fueled by an ancient fear; apparently she 'should' have had no trouble obliterating me with less than a gesture. I tried to initiate a session, but all she would offer were waves reserved for crushing galaxies."  
  
The memory commanded him; an almost childish grin wavered beneath his eyes and their ancient grasp at 'timeless'.  
  
"It was only when I finally got the chance to open an oblivion portal in her vicinity---then, then she stopped, and merely ^stared^. I'm still waiting to see that kind of disbelief again," he sighed silence, "might I be fortunate enough to experience anything so intensely."  
  
Craftsmanship improved affection down into the tips of his nails as they combed through, subtly shaping the woman's hair.  
  
"Her shock outlasted mine; thus fortunately thus formally I could introduce myself---my insights and my interests---my experience and my ambition. Perhaps I shouldn't have used so many names or so much honesty, but I was determined to incite a response, and prepared to bombard her with answers and questions till at last I was certain-"  
  
She similarly ignored his thumb as it risked everything to caress her cheek unafraid.  
  
"That she was not more than a being of over-whelming, yet still oh-vert power."  
  
He combined admiration and anticipated disappointment thoughtlessly, gestating them as he stretched a dry corner of his bottom lip on a canine.  
  
"There was quite a stalemate between us, we battled not so much with patience as with---with-" Seita pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled forcefully, looking back up only at Ryoko's feet, missing her simultaneous, if more subtle, loss of inflated composure.  
  
"No, the only important thing is the one question she answered, the only words she would give me. I asked her where I could find Tsunami."  
  
Making a confession, and speaking to himself, he waited for an interruption from without or an addition from within. He spread tense fingers over the bust and lifted it to his head, pulling out gold and glamour till the women was superimposed onto his body.  
  
"And she told me---^'My sister has her own plans for the prince'^."  
  
The feminine voice was pitiless cold to begin; Seita recreated this for the mask and impaled Ryoko with a grasp at death's authority. She was almost gracious when the 'being' ceased and the talking commenced.  
  
"I wish I could do the encounter more justice," Seita continued in a calming tone just as the last golden hair was replaced with his own. The return of his idol's androgyny seemed more human now. Even as make-up lines slug-trailed across his face, and serpents curled round his throat, he retained his empty white uniform.  
  
"But you'll just have to trust that it was enough, at the time, to re- motivate me. I inarguably could no longer give two ageless men anything but frequent observation, looking in on both Kagato and Yosho while we all tried to build ourselves up."  
  
The serpents tightened their metal scales, asphyxiating his face and rubbing his voice raw.  
  
"But as I am still far from immortality, I am even farther from omnipresence. So! I return from a rather average session, away for only a year, and I find that Yosho's little grandson has been quite busy, what with school, and freeing you, and ^killing Kagato^!"  
  
Ryoko absently wondered, between terrors, if sarcasm could ever look pretty again.  
  
"And thus," Seita snapped back into calm, "you can imagine my surprise. Looking in on earth again only to see The Emperor of Jurai facing his son the savior for the first time in 700 years."  
  
He narrowed his stare, breaking ice concentration into clouds of cutting sand, easily ignoring Ryoko's lingering reaction to Tenchi's latest little title. A simple sigh rolled out of him as he shook his head at some shorter third party to the side.  
  
"And after all I've done for my search, for my work," he looked back up, hoping to share a memory of their earlier encounters, "I only make moderate progress."  
  
Blue forgot itself to a darkening sky-search as gold nearly forgot to hold back another wave of nausea. Oblivion had stretched a little wider.  
  
"Perhaps I'll find irony in it yet, that I trusted my insight so much when analyzing her tone." Seita tilted his head back.  
  
"When she referred to 'her sister' I was certain she was doing so with the hopes that ^one of us^ would finally be meeting our match." He chuckled to the stars' first impressions as they rushed out the last auras of sun. "For some reason I never considered she might have been only entertaining me."  
  
The good humor drained from Seita's voice word by word, Ryoko expected him to blow into his fists to combat some private chill. When he cracked his knuckles instead, she hoped it would drown out the sound of gulping her breath back to life. Lowering her eyes seemed like the only way to hide the single thought screaming more than its share of space.  
  
*Sasami...He doesn't know!  
  
"It still strikes me as odd though, that I could do so much to the displaced children of Jurai, without even a ^whisper^ of a 'sister'." Something like finality drifted down into his hands as they took their time forming the perfect arch. Ryoko stared at them as well; anything to avoid his face, suddenly wanting nothing so much as for him to disappear into his hole again.  
  
"If you're still concerned about the old man---" The pause turned out to be a stop and a reflexive tone change.  
  
"Ryoko?"  
  
She looked up against a raging minority of will, begging for anything to fight everything that held up that single eyebrow and its deathly serious curiosity.  
  
"Ryoko, ^you^ wouldn't know anything about either of these 'sisters', would you?"  
  
For a moment the pores on her face stopped moving. She bit down on metal and bent broken fingers back into their sockets, prompt and short-lived as this interruption.  
  
"Why don't you ask a tree?"  
  
Surprised and elated with her comparatively prompt response, she held her confidence with almost to stop the drain. This portal was just a hole; this was just a reminder. Just another thousand to go. It had to be a good sign for Seita's own half-grin to be struggling with its own predictability.  
  
He looked down. Ryoko watched his nose line up over his upper lip as he polite seceded to satiate any more bitter a failure or victory.  
  
"Life. Lies."  
  
Before Ryoko could wonder at a grasp at the source of this response, Seita lifted his eyes and spoke again in traditionally tailored uniform.  
  
"But at least you're still destructive, and I'm still stupid. Another question you could answer; is it even possible to have two consciousnesses within oblivion? I often wonder if there might be a ^vulnerable^ place for me after all.  
  
"I can feel your rage Ryoko---like a film on my fingers. You would rather erase, rather replace than succeed me. This could very well be the only opportunity, the only chance to face The Ghost of Madness on equal ground."  
  
Seita's taunting hiss curled out thinly, trying to wire in any would-be attacks. Almost everything stepped backward into the portal, nothing more than a face phased through a white wall.  
  
"What?" Ryoko growled despite herself.  
  
"You are obviously still consumed with the idea of personally destroying me. For any reason, perhaps you could...from within oblivion."  
  
She wanted to clutch her skull, squeeze out more courage and hopefully some way to properly reject this ludicrous and painfully appealing invitation. Words came in half-conscious rambles, crawling through and crushing together to form enough material.  
  
"I don't need to worry about that; people like you never---people like you never get to see it coming, but they always get it."  
  
Swallowing anger and chewing it again, Ryoko absorbed the juices. It felt good to savor her words so devilishly, but she'd be damned before she enjoyed this.  
  
"Nobody needs to destroy you, but somebody will."  
  
Foreseeable and just as appropriate, Seita smiled, phasing his arms through the white wall, ready to form a limp arch with his hands at any moment. Hearing his voice without any affectation greater than calming resentment, it made Ryoko scream herself back into a block of ice.  
  
"Do you promise," he tilted his head slightly not to miss a cell of her face, "would you forgive," tilting back the other way, "can you self- preserve mercy and cruelty together," tilting up into closing eyes, "and wield the power left in their wake?"  
  
Too much, there was only one way for drawing it out; Ryoko checked her hands, looked into them of her own will, for her own will. She had to know that being touched by him without any feeling was real, that it did not assert his control. It seemed almost kind then, in context, for him to flag her back to war with a handkerchief wave of sinister velvet.  
  
"Eloquence finds you after all, indeed I never took you for much of an artist." The near then nearing casual tone suggested something up his sleeve directly before he reached up his sleeve. "So you can imagine my surprise when I found this."  
  
The first and only dared drawing pulled open at the edges like a tiny and expendable telegram.  
  
"It's very quaint, but I still have to ask: who ^is^ this anyway?" He rotated it a few degrees in each direction, a mildly confused and bluntly insulting reaction. "Ah well, must not be too important."  
  
Tiny paper squares floated down to the Masaki courtyard, pieces of an old receipt with confidential information. Pirate's gold watched them with stroke-opened eyes, hardly hearing empty blue sprinkle unenthusiastic mixing directions over the final ingredients.  
  
"No more time for illusions or victims. Your warden and your savior never left the office, it remains to be seen whether they end up as martyrs, or quitters."  
  
One last bit of paper stuck to his fingertip and he flicked it off before it caught in his arch. Acceptance and finality, and Ryoko could not breath a memory of whether she wanted him departed, deceased, or worse.  
  
"I can only hope there are more interesting trees and carpenters on the next planet."  
  
The oblivion portal, quiet-polite, swallowed Seita away. No wind to stir Ryoko's hair or the six poorly colored, and slightly malformed, pieces of confetti beneath her. She lost altitude without half the cheer of a deflating balloon, feet bending and slowly collapsing the rest of her body so that the ground barely noticed. A robot low on batteries followed its program just the same; each piece of liter must be collected carefully. Hands cupped just in case the wind decided to return. So much maybe change and would-be comfort came panting and hollering up the shrine steps.  
  
"GRANDPA!---RYOKO!" The names came closer together between strained bonds, but stopped mute or dead as Tenchi stared incredulously at the woman kneeling in the wrong direction for prayer.  
  
"Ry-Ryoko!" His throat to dry to choke, he scrambled over and nearly fell to his knees next to her. After a painful swallow of too little saliva, he leaned forward on both hands with both eyes almost out of everything but weak shouts.  
  
"Ryoko! Ryoko, what happened!? Where's grandpa?!"  
  
His mouth hung open on a last gulp, wider than was necessary. Whoever more fearfully, he placed his hand on her shoulder.  
  
She wailed like a small animal normally unable to make sounds at all. Tenchi stumbled back on his rump while Ryoko clutched and trembled both hands over her chest. A few tiny whimpers huddled inward at his next gulp.  
  
"^Ryoko^."  
  
He whispered for memory, dazed desperation trying to replace an unbelievable present with any fondness the past might spare. The silence continued, drawing more recognition onto Tenchi's nearly soaked canvass. Soon no balanced critique could deny the lopsided distance forming between them.  
  
Instinct and luck must have pulled everything's vision towards the office entrance. A late and half an early breath sounded like 'grandpa' or 'oh no', but both were quickly buried as he sprinted towards the new entranceway.  
  
By Ryoko's unchanged posture who would have known her desperately anonymous prayers had been answered? Tenchi had left her. She continued to read into trembling palms even after the pieces of delusion faded away.  
  
***  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Eight is Martyr-  
  
-Part 4-  
  
Innocence, sacred and futile---measure the deepest deceit.  
  
Paradise, forsaken and brutal---show the invulnerable incomplete.  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
Noboyuki's room was almost nerd neat, only a few books out of line, center dresser drawer pinching out a white wrinkle. Scuffs and scratches along a honey stained desk were all too well dusted to be obscured by paper scatter. A few loving faces propped themselves up in stainless angles and stood up for bric-a-brac. Immaculate carpeting, tense for lack of traffic, shimmered in sterile glass sunlight. The ceiling fan hummed along around pleasantly, dissipating some of the noxious odor and circulating the rest.  
  
Yosho's thin white sheet clung to his emaciated body, gray and heavy with sweat. The closet mirror doubled the room back on itself, helping him strike the perfect dearly departed pose if he'd just move his other hand in place. No one would notice the slighted breathing if they weren't looking for it.  
  
"Grandpa?" Tenchi whispered through the creak of the door.  
  
A wheeze caught in the old throat and retired.  
  
"I've got some soup for you."  
  
He kept his eye on the tray as he entered, closing the door behind him with his elbow, curtsying to ease the latch down and in. Steady steps and he was beside the bedside. Through the soup steam his grandfather looked like a won-ton dumpling, wet doughy wrinkles with a few pinches of meat inside. Tenchi kept looking. His jaw set against stone and his neck shrunk back, eyes too frozen and clear for water. A few stubborn hairs of dust floated through the sunlight and, he imagined, wormed their way straight into his grandfather's lungs, but if he tried to catch them now the soup would get cold. Tenchi kept looking.  
  
"Are you awake grandpa?" In a loud whisper restrained emotion can scream.  
  
Age breathed and youth swallowed in equal silence.  
  
Balancing the tray on his left hand with more strength than necessary, Tenchi bent to the table cabinet. An artillery of prescriptions, some fired and some duds, were moved one by one into neat little rows farthest from the bed. There was still not enough room, so the empty ones were stacked on top of the fat ones till they could be recycled.  
  
"I'll just leave it here." Caretaker Masaki whispered to himself, still hoping to be heard.  
  
Once the tray was within reach, once the napkin was refolded, and once the tray was readjusted to be perfectly parallel with the cabinet's edge, Tenchi bent down to the other bedside commodity. His grandfather's vomit was a thin pink, a perfect compliment to the dark blue plastic bucket. It was normally used to wash the van, but he looked at it like it wasn't there as he picked it up and carried it into his father's bathroom.  
  
Water moved and he returned. While replacing the bucket in its shallow carpet indentation, the caretaker let his patient returned into his more silent and still undivided attention. He didn't notice the reopened door till Washu took a step through it.  
  
"What's his status?"  
  
Startled and solemn again in less than a over the shoulder glance, Tenchi offered a weak smile from his frozen crouch. Washu kept her eyes on Yosho, walking in with all the dignity her injuries and adult form would allow. She'd been afforded a sort of diagonal balance through the padded casts on her right wrist and left ankle, better, not to mention, the brace around her ribs. Everyone had needed to learn quickly how to keep eyes on her face, but the wall plaster on the other side of the bed was still more inviting.  
  
"The bucket was less than half full again, so I'm giving him the same soup." Plain flavor; Tenchi answered.  
  
"What about his pan?"  
  
"I---was--justabouttodothat."  
  
"I'll take care of it, go-" Washu started cold, rethinking the end of her sentence till Tenchi thought she might leave it at that, "go see if Sasami needs any help with dinner."  
  
She could have done better, but didn't seem to care. Tenchi stood next to her while they looked down at the bed.  
  
"Please. Thank you." She excused herself and dismissed him with equal and minimal courtesy.  
  
Tenchi reached the doorway and stopped, speaking formally into his left shoulder.  
  
"Miss Washu, I really think we should take him back to the hospital. I know they probably would have called us if they'd made any progress, but maybe if we took him to a different specialist-"  
  
"No."  
  
The mechanical sound made him turn around in what he hoped was misunderstanding.  
  
"Miss Washu?"  
  
"I said no, Tenchi. I still can't believe I let you take ^me^ to that barbaric place. No, the last thing he needs is the stress and the exposure to more germs. We've already given him enough of Ryo-oh's sap to make him stick to the wall, I doubt those 'doctors' could do any better."  
  
"But-"  
  
"I've told you the only explanation that makes sense, Tenchi. We're doing all we can till I can get my lab fully operational again."  
  
Tenchi took a breath for a retort, but gave it back. In a few heavy steps he was closing the door behind him with more stealth than likely needed. Washu strained superior and heard him mumble to himself, but could only make out the words 'the time'.  
  
The strength of his posture hid the atrophy pulling Tenchi's eyes onto the floor beneath his feet. The emptiness in her cheeks challenged the anxiety in her walk as Aeka kept her gaze just high enough to avoid low obstacles. They made their way into the living room with all the slow certainty of blind men at home, looking up at the sound of each other.  
  
"Good afternoon Lord Tenchi, I just made some tea, would you like some?" The princess asked, one mourning servant to another.  
  
"Yes, thank you." Tenchi answered in kind.  
  
He sat down on the couch with all the comfort of a cold bus-stop bench, glancing at the dead television like a slow clock. Disinterested reflex passed back towards the kitchen and Aeka. She placed the tea tray down and sat next to him rather than across or adjacent; this rare occasion made him pay extra close nerves to the cups, and to her hands.  
  
They blew on their tea, looked into it, and blew again.  
  
"How is he?" Aeka asked her puddle reflection.  
  
"He-" Tenchi swallowed, then tried again with some tea, then ignored the burn. "He liked the soup, so I gave him some more."  
  
They exchanged a few sips in silence. Tenchi glanced at Aeka watching her tea. Aeka glanced at him trying not to watch her.  
  
"Sorry I overslept today," Tenchi began with forced casualness, "I didn't get to see dad, how is he?"  
  
"Pleasant," Aeka answered pleasantly, "but he still seemed very tired."  
  
She sipped at the responding sigh.  
  
"He's not getting enough sleep. That cot he has in the office just isn't good for him." The negativity in his face overreacted to a lecturing tone.  
  
"I agree. I keep suggesting that he try the couch instead." Aeka offered in collective support.  
  
Tenchi's face relaxed, then kept relaxing, till his anxiety wrinkled outward in equal excess. Aeka failed not to notice, and fully hid her eyes behind her bangs. It took longer for her to break the silence again.  
  
"I---I believe he does not want to behave as if Mihoshi were not coming back at any minute." The extension of support stretched to its limits. Tenchi let it connect and sink in.  
  
"I take it you haven't heard any word from her."  
  
"I'm afraid not, neither Ryo-oh or the guardians have received any messages."  
  
With an increasing weight in his jaw, then throat and stomach, Tenchi reached to warm up his still steaming tea.  
  
"Where's Sasami?"  
  
Aeka raised her head, and looked toward the room she shared with her sister. If her own eye-bags weren't still weighing her down, Tenchi would have cleared the way for a mad dash.  
  
"She's taking a nap," Aeka breathed and forced her attention back to her tea, "I think the change in weather is making her groggy."  
  
"Yeah, I think I know how she feels. They say it's going to be a really hot summer."  
  
"It isn't already?" Aeka failed to return his weak delivery of weak conversation.  
  
Tenchi roughly massaged his cup, recognizing and sharing the necessary evil in not losing touch keeping watch over the younger princess every second of the day. It should have helped more, he thought then tried not to.  
  
"Have you received any news from Washu?" Aeka crossed passivity.  
  
"She...still won't let me take him to another doctor, but I'm hoping she'll be able to do a better analysis soon. Of course, she doesn't know when her lab will be ready."  
  
Extending silence made Tenchi look up at her for longer and longer increments.  
  
"Do you really want to know, Your Highness?"  
  
Washu's impersonal voice yanked their attention into the hallway. She was already within a few strides of the couch, uninterested in Tenchi's enduring fascination with her stealth.  
  
"Excuse me?" Aeka asked with almost genuine misunderstanding.  
  
"Do you really want to know your brother's status?"  
  
"Washu, I-" Tenchi's attempt at concerned disapproval didn't make it off the ground.  
  
"I'm sorry Tenchi, but I can only stand misinformation for so long." Washu finished for him without taking her focus off Aeka.  
  
"Misinformation? What---what are you talking about?" She widened her eyes at Washu then tried to deepen them at Tenchi. He had already hung his head. Some loose split ends needed to be set back behind her ear before science could take its rightful place.  
  
"Princess Aeka, even with my grossly limited equipment, I can safely hypothesize that your brother has not contracted any sort of infection, nor has he been poisoned."  
  
Aeka's clenched brow narrowed wide eyes slightly, but her parting lips covered the difference.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Most life forms have the equivalent of a central command organ for all their biological functions, usually a 'brain'. They function automatically whether it's a psychological reaction to a physical stimulus---or a physical reaction to psychological stimulus."  
  
Information paused but did not bring up a visual display or even clear her throat. Accustomed to professional presentation, royalty couldn't help but notice when the speaker began to scratch the cast on her wrist.  
  
"As you likely recall, Seita could directly influence perception, this could only be possible by directly influencing the brain. Not to be inappropriate, but you probably haven't forgotten that his ability to project false stimuli somehow gave him some additional access to involuntary bodily functions."  
  
Washu's lips kept moving too quickly for Aeka's to finish retreating.  
  
"It should actually come as little surprise that such automatic functions as processing sensual stimuli and responding to small shifts in organ chemistry be carried out similarly."  
  
Aeka's eyes had begun to drift back down to the bandages again as Washu gradually removed more emotion from her voice. The next cast-scratching pause gave her the perfect chance for a meek interruption.  
  
"^Are you saying---that he can make us^-"  
  
Tenchi wondered for a moment if Washu had even heard her be predictable.  
  
"I considered that. Perhaps he can introduce, or imitate, a message to the brain to make it believe the body has been infected, but this is unlikely. It seems far more probable that Yosho introduced the necessary message himself."  
  
Tenchi could hear Aeka's head jerk upward, but he kept his own focus on his knees.  
  
"My guess is that your brother is perpetuating his own affliction. If the message of a specific sickness had been introduced artificially, then in addition to the symptoms there would also be the counteractive measures taken by his body. There are none, hence the rapid decline.  
  
"His brain believes it has the symptoms of an affliction and it responds in turn. There has been a fairly adequate amount of research done on the mind's influence on the body's homeostasis; the idea of a disease can often have more of an impact than the disease itself.  
  
"'If' the theories are correct, then Seita is either continuing to convince Yosho that he has these symptoms or has found a way for him to keep convincing himself. In my opinion the latter is the most likely, and your brother has been given a powerful suggestion rather than a potent poison."  
  
"But-but how could he do that?" Aeka trembled. Tenchi watched her hands grip the fabric of her kimono and he felt them in his stomach.  
  
"If his powers of persuasion hypertrophy, as they seem to, then after all this he can likely do almost anything he wants."  
  
Again, Washu was speaking to herself as much as anyone else. She seemed to realize this at roughly the same moment she recognized the scratching position of her hands. With dignified robotic closure, she lifted her head and hid her hands behind her back.  
  
"But if the ^former^ explanation for my hypothesis is true, then he could be doing so right now."  
  
Tenchi had never heard hopelessness grow in Washu's voice, but unsettling as it was the rapid decay into apathy sounded even more chilling.  
  
"That is the status as of now, as it has been. I'm going to my lab now."  
  
She turned.  
  
"Washu!" Aeka stood up from the couch too quickly to straighten her back, the desperate gasp paralyzed.  
  
The tallest woman turned back with the same apathy, now hardly dignified.  
  
"But what---what can we do? Will he recover?"  
  
"He is showing very little tendency to stabilize, and no sign of improvement. Tenchi was right; I cannot make any more predictions till I've made extensive reconstructions in my lab."  
  
Washu turned again, and closed the closet door before anyone could call out to her again. Extended minutes passed, and neither of them tried to speak.  
  
Tenchi punished himself with looks at Aeka's face, and threatened that he might only see it again from this restrained angle. He ran his hands through his hair roughly, apologizing for his and every other living person's failures.  
  
"Aeka. Im sorry. I-"  
  
"Lord Tenchi."  
  
It was her diplomatic voice, that desperately intimidating composure. Somehow she simultaneously hid and focused all of her anxiety, just as she often did when apologizing to him. She was too upset now to waver.  
  
"Thank you for considering my welfare."  
  
He looked over, and was nearly helpless. Their eyes locked in a perfect exchange of guilt and disappointment.  
  
"I appreciate your concern, but I am not a child."  
  
She would consume him, yet was somehow glowing with enough pity for both of them.  
  
"In the future, please do not keep anything from me. I try not to keep anything from you. I-"  
  
Something inside the palace broke as soon as it could into tiny searing shards; Aeka's eyes did not widen dramatically, but every inch of exposed skin visibly clenched. Dumbly, Tenchi watched as she averted her face to implode to escape if need be. She quickly relinquished the privilege of breath, clutching the robes above her knees again.  
  
"I-"  
  
It hardly seemed possible that even a Jurain could shiver so much. He lost his own throat as understanding gave everywhere and guilt took everything. Aeka flew and fell onto his torso, clutching it with weak and desperate fingers. The sobs were supposed to be wails, but there simply wasn't enough control left.  
  
Slowly and unsure and even Tenchi could complete the task of maneuvering without maneuvering them so that he could hold her and stroke her hair. Still unable to speak, he tried to calm his own heartbeat, tried to think of things resembling comfort. The best he could get for a while was a distraction; Aeka felt so very soft and delicate. Her hair smelled the same and better than ever, and he was almost hesitant to do anything but pull her closer when he finally regained enough of his throat to reassure them both.  
  
***  
  
Outdoor chores were finished at dusk and in time to pass on to the shrine patrons that 'sweeping was good for the soul'. He was happy to see his house in the distance and quickened his pace despite the mild exhaustion. Soon enough he noticed Ryoko sitting on the roof. The closer he got, the slower he walked, and the more unnerved he became that he could not tell if she were watching him or not. When he came within shouting distance it clenched his stomach to wonder if she had even seen him. Only through gold could there be any invested interest. He tried not to show that he saw her once within usual pouncing distance, but had to keep returning his eyes to the path in front of him. Two steps away from being able to see her without dramatically arching his neck, he stopped and made eye contact. He hoped he looked more concerned than afraid.  
  
The distance he'd felt that day at the shrine was still growing, but maybe distance wasn't the right term; something was being blocked or cut off. She still looked so afraid that she simply couldn't care anymore and it made him want to scream till he went hoarse, and he might have, but it might be more important to surgically removing his stomach first. Their eye contact lasted all of a cough before Ryoko's face dragged downward and phased away like an illusion. It was a different feeling than the one he remembered from her appearance at his school, and different from the one he got when the ghost of his mother turned out to be Seita, but at that moment both belonged in the same file. He didn't know why, and didn't want to think about it.  
  
***  
  
Dinner that evening included no conversation to speak of. The fanning heat had turned into a miserable humidity net, but complaints sounded more like observations. After making sure the kitchen was nearly blinding in some places most everyone had set out to let in as much air as they could. There were a few yawns between the goodnights.  
  
Tenchi tried to at least lie still in complete silence without his breathing and complete darkness without the intense moon. Grandfather's teachings swirled in his mind just as relentlessly. Knowledge all began to sound the same after an hour or so. The only lesson that endured was the ability to be a part of his environment. Perception, sensitivity, he felt every gentle fiber of his sheets, and he could taste the anxiety in his home all the way down the back of his sandy throat. It was too damned humid, but he still needed a glass of water.  
  
He didn't bother tiptoeing, or even walking slowly. The large windows in the living room let in plenty of light and but Ryoko wasn't maintaining a cover snore. Almost thankfully, his glance traveled up to where he pictured her sleeping with her face in her arms, then no longer relieved or ready, he drifted back down to linger on the couch. With a dissatisfied and almost authoritative frown, he resolved to get his father out of the study and into the living room for a good night's rest, no snoring tonight so no arguments.  
  
Then he resolved to do it after he had his glass of water, thinking that the couch had not reminded him Mihoshi, or Seita, glad for a self-defeating moment. It was hard to drink during near spasms of panicking rage, deep breaths helped as soon as he could breathe.  
  
On his way out of the kitchen Tenchi noticed his father sitting out on the back porch with a bottle of sake at his side. Slightly bent over, Nobuyuki's drab tan shirt almost looked like a grain bag. Despite the fact that portliness didn't run in his family, Tenchi had to reconsider telling him this as an icebreaker. He merely sat down on the opposite side of the bottle and looked up at the sky.  
  
"This really isn't the best way to get to sleep, ya know." Nobuyuki spoke in quieted and pure fatherly affection as he poured some sake for his son.  
  
Forgetting how to hesitate, Tenchi took it, drained it, and returned it. He noticed that there were two other unused saucers by the bottle, but didn't know whether to think of 'absent-minded' or 'optimistic'. Even though his father used the same saucer-cup for himself and offered it back to him, he still drank to the more comforting latter.  
  
"Whatever ^else^ you've done hasn't worked." Like father, like returning with the same dry sarcasm.  
  
"I'm fine, what kind of Japanese would I be if I didn't sleep in an office from time to time?"  
  
Tenchi grinned and assumed his father could feel it.  
  
"Do you think you might go back to school before the semester's over?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
The solemn answer killed the undead party. When the sake came back towards Tenchi he began to shake his head, then lower it, then clutch it. Nobuyuki put the tools aside and continued staring out at the fields. He remained equally mundane and serene while his son pulled open and let go with an iron jaw. A smoke throat balanced frank and frightened to almost hide slow tears.  
  
"What did I bring into our house dad? I can't even think about how long it might take for things to be normal around here again, which---which is stupid because I know they never will."  
  
Even when drinking for sorrow it was rude to gulp so loud  
  
"I have to keep thanking you for understanding why I don't want to give any details. It's not just that it's hard; it is, but I don't want to give you any more stress than you already have. I've put you through enough."  
  
An exhaled chuckle puffed out and drifted into a near sob, but Tenchi kept fighting to say something valuable.  
  
"Dad, I can't tell you how sorry I am, all this, all this madness I've brought into your house. You've been so supportive, and so---damn it you ^don't deserve this^!"  
  
Tenchi started breathing in exhaustion to dry out the sobs, his wind began to waver but it afforded him some level of control. Nobuyuki picked up and reopened the sake after a few minutes of letting his son re-contain himself. Middle-aged nasal goofball and all, his voice was then so entirely ^him^ that it could have sounded right speaking anything, even fatherly advice.  
  
"You know, your mother believed that ^everybody^ always got ^exactly^ what they deserved," he paused to recap the sake, "just like her father." Grabbing the dishes, he stood without looking down on his son. "I like to believe the same thing."  
  
Tenchi breathed it in and thought he might have smiled, standing to follow slowly but shortly after.  
  
Nobuyuki left the screen door open and Tenchi entered through it like an archway.  
  
Glass sang half a note as the liquor bottle settled on the coffee table. The couch played half a chord as the man of the house made himself comfortable.  
  
"Sleep well, son."  
  
"You too, dad."  
  
***  
  
Sasami's sleeping face nuzzled her pillow tenderly. Loose hair nearly covered as much of her body as the sheets. Random eye movement coordinated a rising smile.  
  
---  
  
"Wow Ryo-ohki, have you ever seen so many flowers!?" Sasami asked as she spun around in the endless sea of petals. Her companion raised a pair of ears like a periscope nearby and began circling Sasami like a dolphin rather than a shark.  
  
"I wonder how we got here, there doesn't seem to be any trails," She settled to scratching her chin quizzically. Ryo-ohki emerged beneath her feat with a happy meow. The colorful pollen that had accumulated on her fur made Sasami bend a giggle to dust it away.  
  
"Hmm, I'd like to run around with you Ryo-ohki, but there are so many flowers I couldn't even walk without stepping on them." Sasami mused sadly.  
  
The perfect pet leapt from too clingy cleaning hands. As she landed the flowers around her promptly closed and retreated back into the ground, leaving a blank patch of soil. Small steps bounded ahead a few feet, the flowers in her path continuing to regress. Sasami marveled at the trail being passively mowed in front of her.  
  
"Hey Ryo-ohki, that's neat!" The little pathfinder stopped a few yards away and turned to meow encouragement. Trust fun giggled and took a step forward.  
  
"So which way are we going," she asked enthusiastically.  
  
The cabbit tossed back another meow to follow and began to steadily clear more ground. For a moment Sasami felt the urge to reexamine her surroundings for a more logical direction, but following her friend seemed as natural as breathing. Any further progress should, indeed, be taken in confidence that she was being led to something fun. Sasami almost reveled after a while.  
  
---  
  
As The Second Princess of Jurai rose, her bed warmer woke from a nestled position in the sheets, blinking away the sleep weakly to see first Sasami, then, after another blink, a gigantic carrot shuffling away. Ryo- ohki yawned and returned to her own dream with a contented purr. Dainty toes walked wearily but with comparatively good coordination to be working with closed eyes. As she exited the room Aeka turned over and continued her faint snoring, sleeping better with the door open for circulation.  
  
---  
  
The flowers retreated at right angles where Ryo-ohki had taken seemingly random turns, making the path more geometric than most. For a moment Sasami wondered if the path was being made for her friend rather than by her friend. Regardless then, she imagined someone being able to see a design from high above and giggled at the possibilities.  
  
---  
  
The soft slap of bare feet on the floor was not enough to resurrect exhausted architecture. Sasami didn't know that Tenchi had let himself leave the screen ajar, but walked outside anyway.  
  
---  
  
Such bright sunshine on the prairie made her wonder why she was feeling a chill fighting through humidity. She rubbed her arms and shrugged. Ryo-ohki began to move faster, Sasami laughed and gave chase. The soft dirt beneath her feet became oddly itchy but they both continued on at the same pace regardless, never venturing off course, priding the stretch of their path rather than worrying about its final length.  
  
---  
  
Sasami's young reflection approached the edge of the lake. Her jerky sleep-stride would have mirrored a ravenous zombie had she not such a sweet and happy expression on her face.  
  
---  
  
Ryo-ohki stopped without turning. The still second place princess slowed and stood a few feet behind her friend and gathered confusion all around her. Flower Sea still stretched endlessly; in fact she frowned when she saw that their path had re-grown behind her. Her full uncertainty returned as her guide turned around in the short rectangle of bare dirt between them and meowed happily, eyes closed, head tilted.  
  
"This is weird Ryo-ohki." One little person's little fear went a long way.  
  
Her friend didn't answer but remained completely still and silent as every single flower in sight closed and snaked back into the ground. The overwhelming retreat made Sasami gape in amazement. In a fairytale rainbow of seconds the endless colors had transformed into nothing but blue sky and less than dead dirt. Although she could feel a slight breeze, not a single pinch of dust stirred.  
  
---  
  
Not the picturesque moon, not a decorative window; a white hole delivered Seita onto the shore with a soft crunch of sand. He parted his hand arch, dividing the snake gracefully enough to watch two halves squirm, one ready behind him, and one up to Sasami's ear. The princess's eyes fluttered distress at her dream till someone tore her out of it with a loud snap of his fingers.  
  
---  
  
Ryo-ohki chewed and wrestled in a tangle of sheets, the roots of her dreams giving her more than enough trouble. The joyous struggle eventually carried fantasy over the edge of the bed and onto the floor with a soft thud. Aeka's eyes fluttered open wearily at the noise, but she decided to remain asleep. Ryo-ohki spat out a crumple of sheets and yawned a meow loud enough to make the princess take notice of the ship, then the empty bed behind her. Humidity lost to the chill.  
  
"Sasami?"  
  
---  
  
The abrupt change swayed the pig tales over Sasami's wobble till she rubbed her eyes back into balance. With a sleepy groan she grabbed at the sudden cold on her arms then jerked a stark expression every which way then forward.  
  
"How did I...^Seita^!" Crouched to meet her face to face, gasp to grin, he gently took Sasami's hands in his own.  
  
"Did you miss me, princess?"  
  
Somehow, amid a steady boil of unnamable and consuming nervousness, she managed to specifically look surprised that he didn't use her first name.  
  
---  
  
Aeka possessed herself with every rush of air before bursting into Tenchi's room.  
  
"SASAMI!" Her second hair cover came undone at such a yell and such a valiant attempt to search every corner at once. Tenchi exploded from sleep and nearly fell out of bed.  
  
"Aeka, what's going on?" Scraping the rust from his eyes almost slurred him.  
  
"Tenchi, I can't find Sasami!"  
  
She wailed, digging him by the shoulders and nearly watering him by the face. Landscapes aside, but within infinitely more seconds than they could afford, both headed down the stairs with Ryo-ohki close behind them. Tenchi shout-pounded on the closet door.  
  
---  
  
The moon's reflection dissolved passively in the lake ripples, yet its brilliance still made the golden strands draped about Seita's head seem merely yellow. His smile fell lifeless as Sasami timidly pulled her hands away and took a small step back.  
  
"What's going on Seita, how did I get out here?" She asked uneasily, beginning to rub her arms again.  
  
"You know Sasami, in theory, sleepwalkers do get more exercise." Cleverness offered comfort.  
  
"And where's everybody else?" Not hearing the offer, she looked around even more anxiously for any other sign of life.  
  
"They'll come looking for you soon enough. Why do you ask?" Softness haunted circles around his voice, making her take her time to look at him again.  
  
"You've been gone e-e-ever...ever since Tenchi's grandfather got sick, and every time I ask about you they get all serious and tell me I have to call them right away if I see you...or-or hear you. What's---," Sasami's fear made her look at the ground and twiddle with her hair. "Are they mad at you?"  
  
A heightened awareness stood slowly into quiet orbit, listening to the rustle of black cotton over black leather and ivory synthetic under lavender faux fur, listening to his bones. The rest was background like the back of his hand; lake and wind ripples just gathering leaves, and every blade of grass was the same cut of air.  
  
Sasami watched his gaze sweep the field. He was so tall that he probably couldn't even see her with his head level, but with the skylights behind him his eyes could have been blue or black or blind glass. Even when he closed them she wasn't sure if he was listening to the all he could hear. When he breathed deep it was always obvious by the stretch of his chest, and this time when he looked back down she knew he could see his whole shadow covering her. Everything was so still in his face for so long that when he swallowed, even if it wasn't nervousness, it stood out as much as his breath.  
  
The little princess took another step back and clutched at the oversized T-shirt that was trying to billow above her bare legs, holding it down with the lump in her throat.  
  
"But why?" It was hard to hear her own voice and if she blinked she might cry, or maybe something worse.  
  
Though she really needed to wet her eyes soon, when Seita took an arm's reach step forward they locked wider open. Having never heard the sinister velvet before, she couldn't tell it was laced, striped with dreamy ceremony.  
  
"Because I said so."  
  
---  
  
"Where is she Washu?!" Aeka howled as she took hold of the scientist's collar. Washu had barely entered the living room when the pounce came. She winced from the pain interrogating her injuries.  
  
"Aeka, calm down! Washu's still hurt." Tenchi selflessly tried to sooth Aeka's anxiety with his own.  
  
When The First Princess took both hands away they were shaking so weakly it was a wonder they'd ever held anything. Lowering her head held her throat in place, but her voice almost seemed the same.  
  
"^Please---please help us find her^."  
  
Nothing left to give than what they wanted; Washu glanced over Aeka's head, through Tenchi, and slowly to her right. The open screen door invited in a breeze; it politely removed a petal from the flowers Sasami had set in water and tossed it at their feet.  
  
---  
  
From red to white, the trembling skin under Sasami's fingers would be turning purple soon. It sounded as pitiful as it looked.  
  
"W-W-What are you talking about?"  
  
Looking up at the sky now, she could see more of his eyes as he searched the stars for falling, hiding things. The velvet evaporated so soothingly that it would have been forgotten if it could.  
  
"Did you have many friends back on Jurai, princess?"  
  
"Huh?" Momentary confusion watered down fear.  
  
"Apart from your parents, is there anybody else who misses you?"  
  
It felt good to finally be able to look at the ground, and even better to close her eyes, almost surprising she didn't cry and answered in a reflex mumble.  
  
"I guess not."  
  
"Still, do you think we become friends with people, or just our perceptions of them?"  
  
She caught herself before she looked back up and brought her head down even lower, her answer sounding the same, though not a reflex and not entirely honest.  
  
"I---don't know what you mean."  
  
"Let's put it another way; picture Tenchi, good, kind, honorable. Tenchi. What if the same person you saw as him no longer acted the same, if he behaved totally different? Would you still consider Tenchi to be your friend?" When seducing a jury Seita did not pace, he only looked at the ground and rocked back a little on his heels.  
  
Her tears felt natural, but impossibly more afraid. And although her voice wasn't reflexing any more it was even harder to move. Forcing herself to answer before something worse she accidentally forced her head back up to see him looking directly over her. A few strands of gold almost touched.  
  
"That won't happen, Tenchi's my family, everyone else too. We'll---we'll love each other forever."  
  
Everything in her face hurt, and it was starting to feel like her arms were frozen or missing for holding them so tight so long.  
  
Chuckles jerked in Seita's neck like a series of rapid grunts as he stepped back and bowed slowly forward with his hands firmly behind him. He lifted his head eye to eye, glare to stare, malevolence making the ever-soft face seem like it should be creased, carved, and gray like a tyrant's corpse.  
  
"Only ^Nothing^ last forever."  
  
---  
  
Emeralds were moldy rocks as Washu watched Tenchi follow close behind the princess's mad dash, the partially open screen door barely stayed on track. The footfalls then the bellows faded and she walked slowly into Nobuyuki's room, never lifting her face from the floor till she came to Yosho's side. The old man's sickly form remained unchanged as she stood over him, watching his breaths.  
  
*Ryoko?  
  
She listened to every splinter of the no response, experiencing up from the roof shingles to the sake, mentally squinting to see her daughter's knees up close.  
  
*Did you see her leave?  
  
After the first agony spark Washu reflexed the connection a little thinner.  
  
"No, of course you didn't."  
  
Defeat hurt her throat but spread completely evenly to her chest so the sting didn't jerk a tear. She still needed to brace herself on Yosho's mattress as she spoke again, uncertain whether he'd hear her sound older than even a Jurain would consider. This time not knowing felt worse than the dead voice.  
  
"I guess we're going to lose Sasami now too."  
  
Thinking out loud for two people who weren't listening, it was worse than not knowing, and worse for the moment she saw the field over Ryoko's forearms before the vision pulled back even tighter into itself.  
  
Science tenderly spread her face and hands across Spirit's chest. Labored breaths and exhausted sobs kept each other company.  
  
---  
  
Her legs still wobbled a little as Sasami began backing away again.  
  
If he was taller this time when he stood up straight again, she told herself it wasn't real, in fact this was all only a dream. But a masochist wouldn't pry open a laceration to deepen this Seita's smile just for her sake.  
  
"I don't understand," she cried muffled terror to force her eyes shut, and angled her head as if anticipating a strike, "why are you acting like this?"  
  
"^Ac---tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing^." Stretched into a pinch of steam and nearly kissed directly into her ear; the sinister velvet could actually be worse.  
  
Stuck between a gasp and a choke, Sasami pulled away, not really ready to see him eye to eye ever again, but not expecting not to see him. She turned back to where he'd been; he'd only moved to close his eyes and arch his fingers together the way he did. His last smile and every other were gone.  
  
Turning to flee fast enough to fling tears almost kept her from noticing a six-meter wide oblivion portal spread open and spread swallow. Seita walked out and it closed too quickly for her to notice extra dizziness. One approach matched one retreat and neither faces moved till Sasami gasped and looked from the sensation of the lakeshore sand to the trepidation over her shoulder. Even with only the moon Tenchi's house was just visible across the lake.  
  
"Unless it's a play, there is no acting, only practicing."  
  
Still learning to switch her head around painlessly, she was lucky to be distracted; he'd crept to only half a meter away, still condensing the velvet steam back into a dream cloud.  
  
"Try to think of my time with your family as a project. My most important work to date, actually, and that we're here now because it seems there is still more to do. I've been making plans for you, for us, for a while. But they've become thoroughly outdated already, princess."  
  
"Why aren't you calling me 'Sasami'?" Terror tangled priorities too well for her to notice.  
  
It sounded like another chuckle, but his face wasn't changing, frozen entirely till he brought his wedged hands up and folded every finger in save the smallest, lowering face into knuckles with a blast of wheezy disorientation. But before Sasami could think past how unlike him this was he pulled his hands down with a few quick breaths to reinstate a confident smile.  
  
"I will be giving you a new name soon enough, and until I do, a title is more appropriate. You see, I'd planned to take you on as a sort of long- term project, as a way to keep ties, and to keep your family tied."  
  
A hundred marbles appeared in the atmosphere, too deep sea colored to reflect even the moon. Seita angled his hand to hold an invisible waiter's tray, and the orbs collected above it, replicating a familiar sake bottle glint by glint.  
  
Dreary cave echoes rang in Sasami's ears as he unplugged the cork for a luxurious inhale.  
  
"But as I was considering a recent disappointment, I thought of my original plans for you, princess."  
  
Nearly petrified, a few quivers of Sasami's hope searched his face for a cruel joke.  
  
"You know how Ryoko loooves sake? Well I was thinking that you might develop a taste for it too, surely a princess shouldn't be denied such pleasures. I would take it upon myself, or course, to make the proper house calls to ensure you always got what you wanted---what you needed."  
  
Freezing blue between the two, his eyes swept down her hair and squeezed into the bottle. Spite tightened expression while he slowly titled the contents onto the ground. Instead of forming a puddle beside him, the liquid poured continuously, filling up into a Jurain noblewoman slightly older than Aeka. With a small shake of his wrist, Seita expelled the last drop to create a worn copy of Sasami's favorite headband.  
  
The figure's clothing was stained in poor places, its watery eyes stared blankly over dark bags and emaciated hands shaking a reach up towards the bottle. Pulling it into her mouth and letting her arms flop down, she gulped, leeched, suckled till it leaked, gagged, coughed alcohol near Seita's feet. He didn't step back as she braced herself, fingers in the wet weeds, but the doctor did retrieve the medicine. A mortified hiccup escaped the younger princess as she watched him hold the bottle inches above the projection's reach. It whine-jumped up over and over. Bright teeth gorged on its desperation till at last it fell back to its knees and clutched at his feet. He looked down at the future then up at the present.  
  
"S-S-Sweet, sweet addiction."  
  
Jackhammer air fluttered from his throat, still sharp and barely purposefully uncontrolled. A panicking smile nibbled on his bottom lip and widened his eyes far down on the older princess. She twittled her fingers weakly about her face as she mouthed and gulped at the seemingly endless runoff. Usually, Sasami only heard liquid splatter against flesh in the onsen.  
  
"How lovely it could have been to enslave a princess---to herself."  
  
Dregs turned back into marbles, dissolving the bottle out of Seita's hand. With the last glass drop the barely living contents formed into a mass of them, a moment as a sea egg cluster. It quickly collapsed, each sphere burrowing itself in the globe.  
  
In another attempt to disappear, Sasami tried to turn away again, crushing her face closed in her hands. Only half a step closer was a lot for him and too much already; her scream came stillborn.  
  
"Seita...please...stop." Her voice was discouraging enough without reminding her of that pitiful projection.  
  
"Don't worry, princess, believe it or not I don't want you to lower yourself to my power, I want you to ^surpass it^."  
  
Everything terrible in his voice was soft again, and the sand felt even colder as Sasami took her own half-step back, knowing full well how helpful it wasn't.  
  
"But as things slouch now we don't stand a chance."  
  
It might have been the bones cracking in his hands.  
  
"Even if the very idea of succeeding me sounds too fantastic, a new student, a final test is all that will sustain me long enough to accept failed immortality."  
  
The blanket was soft and almost too heavy when it wrapped itself around her, this was a very hot summer and she'd been sweating in some places, but when she gasped her eyes open at the new surrounding her breath cloud hadn't dissipated yet. Seita was kneeling, pulling his hands away after balancing it on her shoulders. Only daring to move her eyes down a little; it looked like it felt; a velour trimming of the night sky. Yet, here it couldn't be half that real.  
  
"But it all depends on whether our head start is in the right direction," he continued, blinking numb when he had her eyes again, "it won't be a play date for either of us, but all the other answers are starting to ask themselves out."  
  
At the first signs of him lowering his guard to watch his fingers arch, she shut tight and tried to shrink back like a turtle without putting too much in the blanket.  
  
"There is a type of---an act of---of baseness, that can plant the seed of apathy like no other. The very thought of it, even from a bystanding or avenging perspective, can choke off life like---like ^Nothing^."  
  
Hearing his breath sharpen made everything sound impossibly worse, Sasami felt another knot finish and glue itself tight in her stomach.  
  
"We will experience it together like never---and you, you will be reborn from what it is to know the ultimate failure---with no punishment. And I-"  
  
His swallow against his cut off wheeze had to have made everything else worse, but he continued the same for sounding the best.  
  
"I will finally get to admit defeat; that actions really do speak-"  
  
The breaths belonged to a rodent till they left through a beast of burden. One, two, three, calm. Another swallow and Sasami heard his bones crack again as he leaned forward, she wasn't seeing her life flash anymore than she was feeling she'd ever had a voice.  
  
"But, if-in-results end up in-conclusive, we may stumble upon the answer to something else," the laugh was weak breath chips, almost like the rodent again till it was entirely like a vermin, "or at least a question to confront the question:"  
  
The saliva readied itself around his teeth to wet his lips as he pursed them in. It had taken him this long to perfectly crush together sinister and velvet on their affected deathbeds.  
  
"^Why is it, that the two most prolific propaganda tools continue to be sexuality-"  
  
Seita's hand shot forward, clutching and dragging Sasami's face upwards by her chin. The bony cage was colder than it could be and the tiniest bar curved inward, dimpling and caressing down her cheek with a perfect point.  
  
"-and cute---little---children^?"  
  
Moon mocking teeth parted smiles and perfumed sweet, but everything pretty handsome plummeted into confusion when the royal circles appeared on the little forehead in a raging turquoise brilliance. A strong breeze erupted all around them, grasses and trees hissed grand promises to come. Seita looked across the lake at something in the distant forest erupting a powerful aura.  
  
---  
  
A harsh gasp froze the search, Tenchi turned to face Aeka, who'd barely made it ten meters from the forest edge before stopping and clutching her tiara. It radiated overwhelming and familiar. Funaho's ground beacon faded, and from that distance they glanced to the next. The wide edges of more than any apparition were just visible across the lake.  
  
---  
  
Seita's future stepped back so quickly that his hand clasped on itself. He looked down at Sasami but mostly at the light water reflection behind her. The energy from her forehead flashed and basically blinded for half a moment. Demanding from each direction, especially everywhere, the voice's force described nothing less than divine.  
  
"STOP___THIS___NOW!"  
  
The unwelcome guest watched his still gripping right hand experience itself forever if it wanted, not too long after he blinked very thoughtful and stood very tall, hands behind him, half a smile up to do the other half's work. He looked where awe should be as a Goddess gently put her hand on Sasami's shoulder and motioned the bewildered girl into a protected position at her side. At a glance his fallen blanket evaporated back up into place.  
  
Though each color spoke peace from life and life through peace, her face was hardened with the combined power of countless defensive parents. In such an existence-altering state presence alone was flattening the grass around him, but Seita stepped forward like a cocky bully over a line in the sand.  
  
The eyes, the vision of Sasami's future, pressed into his movements like brail, her frown deepening as he lowered his head. Near concealed ends of a sharpened grin just visible, he chuckled to frighten children at an amusement park, sighed---begged to lick a razor, then promised a bath in the tortured ravishing of original innocence, talking eager confidence simultaneously into match and mock.  
  
"You...must be...^Tsunami^!"  
  
***  
  
A garden surrounded from out of will, loving its fear of its maker though its maker would never ask. In the center something impossible didn't want to be disturbed. The servant, ready to eat a star before asking how many more, remained disembodied, old, and male for the same sake. Designed as a filter, a fetcher, now he'd taken on the role of advisor as per result of an unspoken request poorly retracted. Protecting her would always mean risking destruction at a glance.  
  
*My lady?  
  
*I do not wish to be disturbed, much less to express it so.  
  
*Might I apologize by performing something new?  
  
*No.  
  
*Then, if it disturbs you no more, I have a question.  
  
*No.  
  
*...My lady, it weakens my use to you to comprehend your indirect answers.  
  
*It takes nothing of me to know your questions, all of them.  
  
*Then may it take less for you to hear them; did you speak to your sisters?  
  
*My 'sister', yes.  
  
*For her benefit?  
  
*Not one that would be clear to her.  
  
*Then is it without more knowledge than her own that she now faces-  
  
*Dare not use such strong terms. She 'acknowledges'; that is flattery enough.  
  
*Yes, my lady, I understand. I was-  
  
*I...do not wish for you to interfere. Is that still clear?  
  
*It weakens me to comprehend your indirect answers; you know I would not hesitate to risk my existence for yours.  
  
*Not ^your^ existence, not your existence when ^my^ champion has already 'given' himself to destroy---this.  
  
*His sacrifice was a testament to you.  
  
*Of course it was, he knew no more, better than my sister's champion.  
  
*Will either of them fair---'differently' against 'this'?  
  
*Of course, they know no better.  
  
***  
  
One gentlest hand moved Sasami slightly more behind softer robes. Two better than bluest eyes looked at the discolored pallor on favored fingers, testing the texture of the coarse hair on his bare forearms, the plain white stain cloth over his chest, and plotting a coarse path over his scalp. He pressed flat against teeth and fat around lips. Trembling unclean for breathing unsavory, more as he realized what was being seen and pressed a little half claw all the way in. Held between himself and a Goddess his hand was further lost in tremors for the weight of a blood drop on his pretty point. The left hand crawled up and around like a starfish to hold it dear against his forehead. Breath after breath stumbled out, freezing him to death in a base ecstasy limbo.  
  
Little by little by hoarding replacing calm, both hands fell to an outstretched parallel, palms lifted up in tempting surrender. Take your best shot and embrace the future. Behold the opening ritual to trade the body for the world. The Ghost of Madness looked into the eyes of The Great Tree. A smooth loathing consumed the nasal quality of his natural voice in a braving storm of lascivious fabric and decadent paint.  
  
"By the mortal zeal," he stepped forward more surely than weak muscles should, "and my new name."  
  
Sasami gasped in terror, clinging tighter to her future robes and hiding one eye behind them. Sapphire venom coiled and clenched at the wilting flesh beneath it.  
  
"Please open the path to our ancestors, the space trees."  
  
The air crushed in his hands, shuddering into his blood as it seeped into his throat.  
  
"Heaven to ocean, ocean to earth, earth back to heaven; draw me the taste of forgetting the light."  
  
Another ice storm titled on its edge to narrowly miss him and he folded upright with hands behind and face forward. Smug smiles were born ready.  
  
"I was wondering when you were finally going to show up."  
  
Tsunami didn't move enough to be standing still, but when she spoke her entire form shimmered life into life out of everything. A place for destruction to rest its weary head spread sheets good and far.  
  
"I cannot allow you to harm this child."  
  
A tooth edge grew in his corner smirk, ripe and waiting but instead snapping every trace of every picture down to a line of a face; skipping stone-serious and sinking into humorless like an iron file turning wood blocks to paper.  
  
Almost fascinated with the dramatic change in expression, Sasami tilted out for a better look. This was what Seita really looked like, left for too long in an unhealthy weight loss oil that didn't mix with paint. Even as her head began to feel lighter her stomach began to wail. She buried her face, a whispered plea for home, and a few tears into the tightly clenched softness. It was quiet enough to hear that empty place of his open up to speak for him. She tried to envision Tsunami standing up to it all.  
  
"I take it your 'sister' didn't give you any warning."  
  
The Goddess's frown returned slightly to send the negotiators home, all but crossing her arms for emphasis.  
  
"She didn't have to."  
  
The even shorter answer seemed to undercut Seita's calm and returned a small amount of glare to his face. He quickly made in shine back with a shameless rasp of sarcasm.  
  
"A crypt-tic answer? Nooo! Now when have the powers beyond the stars ^ever^ needed to keep us guessing?"  
  
Sarcasm was always basically spite anyway, but the next step forward was small enough to not seem so sure. Pink cool pools blinked unaffectedly to receive the reflection of blue heat needles; apparently he either knew or did not care to ask her plan.  
  
"But I still can't help but be honored," the half smile wanted to be a real blade so bad, "should I be ironic and say-"  
  
A chuckle tossed his head about for a gentle moment, he closed his eyes to open them again on a post-confident modern-effeminate voice version.  
  
"That I'm 'unable to express how uncanny it is to interpret your words'?  
  
"Yes, for ^you^ to speak to ^ME^ with a focus for ambiguous-"  
  
Those two little stabs in the bile stressed the bag enough to spill it all out in a tidal wave.  
  
"It makes me feel so RIGHT---so ^DAMNABLY^ RIGHT!"  
  
He looked ready to spit after spraying so much saliva glaze around his fury, but swallowed some more to gorge his pride back to calm confident, if still shaking, Seita.  
  
"I simply must be, for you to only appear now with the discipline ruler after I've already done so much to---'tart up all of existence for oblivion's kiss', yes, I do still like the sound of that---and you ^must^ have liked the ^sight^ of it."  
  
Like a new sale on free spirit, plain clothes wavered for trying too hard to balance as he spun, hands and now face up to the sky. Almost back to fury, but it was all painfully funny, really it was.  
  
"Now it's only fitting for YOU to 'bear witness' because YOU---^watched^--- ^it all^!  
  
On the next revolution he stopped at their station and hung his head, seeming to rest his engine. Though they moved him, his breaths were quiet, and though he wasn't boxing he thumb-wiped his bottom lip. Still quiet as he looked up, he kept attention on the cleaning hand and the texture between thumb and forefinger. Again he looked at Tsunami and killed smile memories, pointing to his mouth, wiping bottom lip again slow, not stopping till the red thick slick ended halfway along his cheek. Turning the scowl almost too easily into a harlot's pout, he tilted his head, waiting for Tsunami to show some sign of suppressed revulsion that he could bill as desire. During the silence Sasami dared to expose half an eye. Sensing it or yearning for it, Seita moved to catch her attention off guard, smiling, savoring, a quarter of the perfect tears.  
  
"In some, whatever, 'your' universe it seems there ^are^ more important things than NOT flattering me." He realigned his head to face her straighter, pulling up some velvet worms on the way.  
  
"It seems Jurai really is the Promised Land, yet you don't save its peasants, and certainly not it slaves," he grinned sharp, "but not just any noble either. It's only worth your time if it's the cutest---little---"  
  
Seita's blue displaced malice, needing all the narrow for curiosity. The wind only for this wave had made her seem almost an underwater apparition, but a moments difference in her robe and or Sasami's footing revealed a glance more of The Second Princess of Jurai. A leaning step closer set painting hands behind him again, in almost three triangles he examined the short and tall of it and their reflections in the lake. Every change of view melted some of the wax prurience into a series of thin trails and finally a flat puddle. He tried to build it back up again for being the first to notice, but it kept running through his fingers and eventually scalding him. It seemed only natural, though, to whoop it up for connection brand enlightenment.  
  
"^That's---IT^!"  
  
Rising manic cackles canceled out portions of his elated victory bellow, but he continued till they reached a compromise on their own.  
  
"That---that's i-heh-heh-it! All this time-"  
  
He gave it all to laughter, the collapse of his lungs, the tearing of his throat, who cared so long as the Goddess and the princess heard nothing but his fanatic praise of irony, romantic shortsightedness, and everything in between.  
  
"All this time you were ^right under my nose^!"  
  
A rain of broken multicolored glass fell shrilly on Sasami's ears and she covered them desperately, almost loosing her balance as she tried to bury her eyes in robes again. The laughter eventually exhausted and hid Seita's face in his own hands. He shook a few more chuckles loose, hissing for the crickets with a deep breath, then regarding them with the unfathomable pride that might even make his executioner hesitate.  
  
"I guess we can't take anything more for granted."  
  
He bent down, crouching with arms draped carelessly over his knees, glaring right into Sasami's face through Tsunami's robes.  
  
"Is it safe to ask 'directly' then, if this young body is on lease...or is the mortgage already bought and paid for?"  
  
No change in the Goddess's expression, though she visibly considered one.  
  
"That is none of your concern."  
  
Even with a mouthful of peace she knew how to speak to a willful child, but Seita only smiled wider and rose with a chuckle of avenging patience.  
  
"No, it is ^all^ of our concerns." He searched and sized, letting sinister velvet billow lavishly to wrap round her from the ankles up. Another step forward, two and a quarter more before he'd be within whispering distance again.  
  
"Don't you see? It answers my question...^that^ is what it takes to get your attention. All those rituals, all those prayers, all that begging, it all falls into hopeless, albeit affectionate subjectivity." The minimal alms he afforded her sense of philanthropy were so pompous they could only be sincere. "None of it, good Goddess, can get your attention like pure, and inescapable, ^self preservation^."  
  
Seita gestured an open hand toward Sasami and Tsunami followed it, only after laying a gentle hand over the princess's head did she finally allow herself to return what she could of a darkened glare, glowing with more deadly focus than she'd used to appear with.  
  
"I see you don't deny it," he claimed victory after another short chuckle.  
  
"My relationship to Sasami makes no difference now." Tsunami watched Seita light up with the rising weight of confrontation in her voice.  
  
"Your relationship to 'her'?" Chest shook and face tightened with new silent laughs, barely kept under control with a sharp sneering smile, "The only issue now---is your future relationships to ^me^!"  
  
A perfect wedge or tent for the wind and heavens, it still shook again to be formed on such uneasy ground. Tsunami fully furrowed her brow, uninterested or unable to hide her insult for all the threat she'd already fought to stand above. Her apparent anger only intensified as he spoke on, a brilliant actor to make a lunatic sound so seductive.  
  
"I must admit though; no mortal being should be able to face a Goddess this way---and vice versa."  
  
Where he should have added a smirk, Seita let his face sink. But a solemn natural; his gaze was perfect, he knew.  
  
"But don't worry, we'll be equals just long enough for you to succeed me."  
  
Tsunami's eyes slowly began to weaken and widen, but she managed to keep her jaw set. The arch raised till the tips of his middle fingers lined up with the bridge of his nose. He took a long step backward without any desire to imitate retreat or break eye contact.  
  
"Perhaps it ^would^ have been kind of your sister to warn you. During our-- -'encounter' I didn't yet feel I would need someone to continue my work, of course I was also not quite so 'important' then."  
  
Another step back, the building intensity in his breath and eyes beginning to steal the energy needed to keep his smile up and eventually the focus to flatter the sound of his voice.  
  
"The sessions I've conducted here, the advancements I've made-" Seita looked down at Sasami again and let his chaos smile for him for a trembling, nearly frothing moment before he had to speak again. It held on best it could.  
  
"Just---the ^inspiration^---the ^preparation^ to properly 'initiate' this child," he swallowed, breathed, and looked back at the Goddess, "it has made me more powerful than-"  
  
A thought frown cut him off. He closed his eyes with a silent moment sighed out. Tsunami moved Sasami almost completely behind her.  
  
"No," he continued with a shade of quieted self-consciousness, "I really do talk too much. You knew what I was going to do to Sasami, and now you know what I'm going to do to you, but to understand ^why^..." Eyes open to the obsession behind the legacy, to the basic instinct behind the light, Seita spoke sincerely and couldn't help but sacrifice his voice unto a thousand subhuman hisses.  
  
"I will undo divine and give ^exactly^ what is wanted. I won't tell you the ^answer^, I will show you your ^master^!"  
  
He'd clenched his face shut to keep the silent uprising from shaking his skull loose. Tsunami pulled her head back and squared her shoulders, seeming to need a breath but taking none. She closed her eyes as well, but serenely, and opened them with all traces of hostility completely banished.  
  
"There are many things that choose to be destructive, but I must only deter them when they threaten the balance."  
  
The aggressor shot open and glared over his fingertips with undivided suspicion. She continued.  
  
"And yes, sometimes that means protecting myself; I have a responsibility to all living things, that includes you."  
  
Perhaps checking the blues before they narrowed into slivers again, she still spoke with another layer of consuming compassion.  
  
"I understand the power that has possessed you well enough, and it has no place here."  
  
One last pucker to test coagulate, one last look at pieces of the white and flesh colored thing holding him up, and serenity found its malignant twin in the close of Seita's eyes. He pulled his head back for more height and lowered his arched hands to chest level; such a convincing imitation of benevolence drained the surface mortality from his face in no time.  
  
"So that's your answer, so indeed, so envision, we truly can't take anything more for granted. New instincts only convince so far. Like my time with your sister; this session will require a little more---"  
  
"^Faaaith^".  
  
Even from a slight distance even a lesser creature would have noticed the minute tension clenching the otherwise frozen man's expression. And, being a Goddess, Tsunami couldn't be so mortal or dishonest to hide horror when the word surrounded her like torches echoing in fog. And more, mouth still tightly closed, his laugh crept low and menacing up her memory and into her voice. The sound itself was not so unsettling as the fact that she actually ^heard^ it. Only in the few beginning and completing moments of merging with another life form had she glimpsed what it was like to have separate senses.  
  
Now she felt it, as clearly as a mortal might feel a pregnant insect burrowing into their flash, it was only sound, but it clenched torment at her consciousness, confusing her almost nonexistent knowledge of physical pain. Everything about the laughter increased and she wanted to cover her ears as Sasami was doing, but resisted, barely.  
  
Hissing whispers began to squirm into his laughter like a locust plague. Soon countless voices bombarded her at once, each with senseless or imitated words. The overtly maddening sounds, however, stepped into a slightly quieter background to make room for a collection of mentally damaged persons wailing garbled pleas or damnations as they struck their heads against padded walls.  
  
Another impulse, this time to bend and focus enough energy to hug Sasami tightly against her, it had to be extinguished quickly. She couldn't resist looking down though, and coddling the little princesses head, searching for comfort that she'd just been able to block most of their connection.  
  
"^I believe your sister experienced this same---adjustment^".  
  
Into the forefront of the cacophony it seemed almost a charming calm, yet Tsunami knew then what Sasami would experience where he to whisper venom over her ear.  
  
"I had to focus harder than I thought possible just to get a simple perception projection through to her." The asylum chorus projected further in his momentary absence or recruitment. "Only now it is so much easier."  
  
Tsunami looked up into the flashing wave of a true shield, but never let Seita think for a moment that she didn't have unrelenting eyes on him. The invisible barrier crushed the grass and passed over him. Though this was distressing enough the second time, it was even worse to 'see' him smile shade up by shade up of high-class whore-red lip color. He opened his eyes to the speed of new doll skin fading onto him and filling weak into lean. Conversely he left it to blue to express without excess the immune arrogance and the merciless lust of his ambition. Speaking plainly had always known how to sound almost sagely. No love lost for the warm up sinister poses, intimidation clearly pleased him more with the idea that he might be wise.  
  
"It would make sense for the highest beings to be less susceptible to certain anxieties. But for your sister, and I'm sure for you as well; it must be especially terrifying to confront something you cannot destroy, and even more so, to be confronted by something you cannot accept."  
  
An echoed crack of a cartilage whip and the hopeless case ambiance faded into lake water. Seita began to lift both elbows without moving the position of his hands. He seemed ready to pull the arch apart, but instead it stayed intact while arms detached at the wrists like pieces of vanilla taffy. Drooping tails of flesh dangled from the stumps as he raised them upward to slowly ignite the crowd for stigmata.  
  
His hands, still suspended before his chest, took their own moment before unfolding and landing palms down and fingers spread on each breast. They vacuumed the air from beneath his loose white shirt, quickly making it as tight as a second rubber skin. A lone breeze ruffled and melted the pale pant legs till they relaxed into a skirt over his feet, overly long, overflowing onto the ground like cake batter.  
  
Quick chameleon; both hands blended completely black. Veins grew from the detached tails on his wrists, all eager to spread like accelerated roots up his torso, neck and arms. Some creased their paths and some wove through in hasty stitches. From the still elevated severances at the ends of his arms rigid black structures, bird bone insect antennae, began to puncture their way out through the dough.  
  
Seita's already slender torso began to emaciate till his belly sunk in, exposing a sickly and angular ribcage. With a sound like crumbling mortar a spine must have detached to stretch him ever taller. Skirt flow changed course as well, molding legs into a bulbous white mollusk tail that was soon open to the overrun of veins. Each of the hard growths from his arms began to branch off in tribute to a batwing skeleton. When the roots had spread evenly across everything form the neck down, his body continued to stretch and grow with rough autopsy and practice taxidermy noises.  
  
Through every moment of the transformation, their eyes never forsook each other. With both of them concentrating on not concentrating entirely on this grotesque figure, neither of them could match the other with much more than an attempt at cold, blank, patience.  
  
First to flinch, out of the running, over the race, Seita rolled his eyes back to white and looked upward. Flesh leeched against the collarbones just as it had around his ribcage. The wings continued to grow outward even as he pulled his shoulders forward to deepen the dent beneath his neck. Frames creaked and snapped at the sudden slam of chin to chest, echoing similar as he raised his head up to reveal a toothless gapping maw. His skull deflated, pulling eye sockets and mouth back like a rubber mask.  
  
Something like growth continued till it towered a half story above The Path Engraved by The Light. A new head ripped itself up from the torso. This long and perpetually melting worm cut its mouth wide enough mouth to swallow a Jurain. It bent toward the Goddess without a sound save the splattering drip of graying flesh, saliva. The veins began to sprout from the wing bones and nearly fill in the space between them in a flat twist of chaos pattern. When its breath should have wilted the princess's flowers its wings began to slowly fold around them.  
  
It stretched its mouth further with a thickly layered roar, clogs of jellied skin poorly obstructing hoards of guttural moans. Swinging low and back a few meters it let out a flood of nausea gray. The spill turned to slow glue abruptly with Seita standing haloed by his latest mouth. His long snow bright coat was buttoned only at the waist, corner folded up hourglass with onyx sand at both ends of time. Quicksilver devoured chrome on the natural fingertip sway at his sides. Quicksilver tempted platinum over touch don't kiss lips, around worship don't speak eyes. Mercury ran a lightning de-coloration down every perfect strand of Seita's dandy draped hair.  
  
As the unspeakable claimed its right to mute even divinity, Tsunami's will projected stoically, washing through to the core of this image as it hardly did credit to the loathsome, violating force thrusting it into her consciousness. Yet, through to the greater everything of what she was, she needed to keep Sasami safe. Already held tight against the storm, the princess gratefully accepted memories of new trees rising up from ash, and polluted waters slowly being reclaimed by tiny and hearty animals.  
  
If her charge could be shielded this much, then she could remain appearing unafraid, and unaffected by Seita's apparent call on her bluff. He lifted a hand, sharpened nail out for polite blood, and smoothed back some of the pearl curtain. Head tilting into the affectation angle, he smiled his eyes closed for the onslaught of lust all primed for genocide on chance of tasting his sinister velvet tongue.  
  
"There is nothing so vain as a self-inflicted grotesque."  
  
The other hand came up to smooth glue back the other side, each finger soon pulling his chin up, making sure everything stayed in place when the last of the velvet left the All of the rest.  
  
"^But there is nothing---so grotesque---as wasted vanity^!"  
  
To this still unaffected testimony to Jurai's strength, Seita bowed, holding his eyes for as long-menacing as possible before taking aim at the ground with puckered lips. A phlegm-drop dripped like a falling egg white if it were white. Soon as it hit the bit of fluid began its slow grow into an oblivion portal. Satisfied with the size of a manhole cover, he stood again and faced his future like a new concubine.  
  
"Vanity, like time, may mean something entirely different to immortals, but you are in no position to ^waste^ mine."  
  
More automatic than nature, Tsunami's eyes widened at the absence under the decidedly more proportioned nose. Seita followed the path her affect to this naked reanimation of a dead nemesis, then back up to claim interest as she begged forgiveness of herself for hoping to face it like a vulgar taxidermy. He almost spoke like a gracious winner: no insults, no sympathy.  
  
"I will take the faith of Jurai, in all her forms, and transform 'it' into my apprentice. I will ensure the survival of this, the grandest undertaking conceivable by either doctor or deity, artist or fascist. What the Ghost of Madness may not finish, you will."  
  
The white puddle disappeared down the drain in a matter of seconds, dynamic if it weren't just for show, maybe even distracting if Tsunami hadn't bowed her own head and raised it with a hesitant yet irreplaceable thought. He called her bluff, reflecting his frown on the back of her last card.  
  
"So savor it, the honest narcotic of truly having no choice."  
  
Smug smiles were, undoubtedly, born ready and willing to the end.  
  
"Because there is nothing you can do to stop this."  
  
Exhausted arrogance and forgotten compassion, the final sphere, deadened his voice to a deafening calm. Having lost most of her shield at the opening presence of a somehow thicker two dimension, Sasami's frightened sniffles again tried to muffle themselves in Tsunami's robe. The lake still caressed the sand beneath their feet.  
  
And up like a creased stain on this latest aesthetic ideal, this bare core rolled over a leftover mortality peel. Perhaps it simply unnerved him to see such a different form of confidence on someone's face, unsure but resolute to be naturally unafraid.  
  
---  
  
It was cold inside Aeka's shield, probably colder in the lake billowing under them. Tenchi felt the hilt merging with his hand, waiting for this to feel reassuring again, not thinking twice for leaving the armor ring behind, not blinking once to stare at the royally consumed profile. Earth gravity, she had cursed to herself, would keep them from moving fast enough to vaporize everything in their path. He didn't know if he wanted some degree of his hand on her shoulder, but he still wasn't ready for whatever the distant apparition might grow into.  
  
---  
  
Tsunami closed her eyes and held out her hand. A large oval in the sand between them glowed white-hot-hottest, then mirror-slightly imperfect. Tender melancholy finally allowed patience their embrace.  
  
"I'm not going to stop you."  
  
Seita's projection glanced down at his reflection then up at Tsunami with a curious frown. She was contented, stroking Sasami's hair as she continued.  
  
"You are going to stop yourself."  
  
He looked at his reflection again in time to see it shatter into a pool of light draining into a window on an immaculate hospital hallway. People crossed the halls with wheelchairs and flowers. Uniforms and important protective suits marched casual and sincerely concerned. The intercom echoed and hauled Seita in by the inner ear. A man who, even at a distance, looked to be his older, less attractive, and more professional brother, kept him there. The standard, staff issue shoes, didn't match his pants but they did squeak in a smart about-face as he finished with the receptionist and walked up the hallway. The window backed up to keep him and show him closer.  
  
"What exactly is-" He scoffed up an eyebrow, but stopped when a voice called out from off the mirror.  
  
"Dr. Shima, excuse me, Dr. Shima."  
  
The doctor stopped and turned to face a middle-aged man in humble class casuals who approached as soon as he was acknowledged.  
  
"G-Good afternoon Dr. Shima, my name is Matsumo Yama, my sister, Matsumo Kiren, was a patient of yours." Slightly nervous would have been severely embarrassed if he'd tried to keep any cooler.  
  
"Ah, yes, Ms. Matsumo," the Dr. replied after a brief pause, "how is she doing?"  
  
"She's doing very well. Actually, it will be Ms. Tetuken soon."  
  
"That's-" the Dr. began kindly.  
  
"I j-j-just wanted to thank you!" Broken restraints interrupted, taking the hand without the clipboard in both of his, "you helped my sister so much...you-you're a great man, Dr. Shima."  
  
The Dr. put a comforting hand on the ready to break shoulder, and held the rest up with an off the record smile. Swallowed again by a pool of light, the brittle window readied to be replaced with another.  
  
Silver didn't waver, cemented on even as the tendons gripped excessively to rebuild the arch. Then the tips slipped a little before buckling into each other. Seita's lines still shimmered while he stretched open the top two and sunk open the bottom one. A holy aura, two-dimensional halo opened behind him, its diameter flickering everything between peacock and hardhat. The movement continued, seemingly in tune with his own previously excited chaos breaths till they too calmed. A pinprick of white healed above the platinum curtain.  
  
By his tallest posture, Seita's doll skin drained dye, and by Tsunami's mirror one too many two dimensions struck him flat as a map, beholding the landscape, beholden to his executioner. Bodily lean stretched rusted wire, thin and frail then disembodied grotesque and bisected plain on just this map's paper cut.  
  
Beholding the landscape and disembodied grotesque, his makeups and costumes clutched a spill of entrails more pretty than should have been necessary. Nothing imperfect, only good enough to hold back a mortal wound. Beholding the landscape and bisected plain, standing so straight after being laid out flat, this plane in emptiness. This now a plane only an incline in a void till the movement is complete; from center to the end will fall back twice the distance on the now new decline.  
  
Sasami felt moved to see where her fear had gone, struck curious by the sudden quiet. Tsunami was watching Seita as he watched something on the ground, she stepped out from behind the robes and took a step forward. Her future didn't hold her back.  
  
The image gave out to an older man taking the podium of a large stage.  
  
"And the award for outstanding achievement in the field of Psychotherapy goes to..."  
  
One time Sasami had seen a very old person on a shopping trip, they quaked constantly as if it were natural. Even though Seita's hands were stuck tight in their wedge, he was trembling the same way, as if caught in a vigorous applause.  
  
The same Dr. walked across the stage, smoothing some slightly longer and sheepishly curling hair behind his ear, trying to smile away his humility flush. He tried not to look the presenter in the eye for too long before bending to the microphone's level and clearing his throat.  
  
The image changed more quickly this time; Dr. Shima's office was furnished with black polish and decorated with pieces of inoffensive surrealism. Under shorter and slickest hair, over moderately fine suit, he made a note with a conclusive dot. It took nothing from his attention on the plain young girl occupying the couch. They both rose and the Dr. opened the door and smiled for her, lucky not to have anything in his mouth when she embraced him.  
  
"Thank you Dr. Shima, thank you for everything," she promised not to cry, even if happy or hidden in his comparatively high chest. Rather than place a comforting hand on her shoulder, this time he stood looking down the drain of his expression.  
  
Dropping knees, slouching shoulders perfect for the weight of reacquainted fragility, not too fast, not sturdy enough. Detached pieces all clutched together in a scowl, his jaw line just one sync crushing out a vibration code obvious as a cheap parlor trick. That to exalt creation he needed to exploit baser instincts and exorcise soft emotions like foreign reflexes.  
  
He clenched his face at the ground for it, but knew the reaction that was coming. But to rediscover it again after so much atrophy, so small and mundane? Already it had been numerous enough, though, to share forever, and numerous and repetitive enough though, to bring his standard in to negate it.  
  
Even as the strain forced him to fall before the glass, catching himself, holding himself up, holding out on his hands, he showed off knowing he'd already failed for real. Still there was so much energy to use, so much energy to have to think about it. Still there was so much contempt that it should be expected. In the angles of his flawless sapphire predictable would be worse than vulnerable, even when the two merged. The clever must dismiss better than the stronger can hide, and Seita wanted to look smart when he submitted to the first battle lost on his terms. He wanted so much, and he had to look smart when he looked up into Sasami before sinking into nothing.  
  
---  
  
Sasami felt Tsunami again, not looking up though, as the Goddess rested her hand and began fading it off the still growing shoulder. Her serenity flowed out over fear's regrets and out into life's everythings.  
  
"I am still with you, Sasami."  
  
Weak automation craned her head up at the peaceful apparition's last moments, Tsunami was facing solemn into the patch of ground Seita had held. There was just enough time to turn back down and smile at her vulnerable self before her vulnerable self, The Second Princess, stood alone by the water again, hearing every insect and wind quieted and clear. Something powerful was cutting the lake right toward her. She didn't move.  
  
"SASAMI!"  
  
Aeka's wail dwarfed the roar of water and Jurai power that brought her and Tenchi to the shore alongside and slightly farther inland for the momentum. Tenchi had his sword ready even if he'd forgotten or lost his shoes.  
  
Less than ladylike, Aeka stumbled onto her knees and gripped her sister by the shoulders in a desperately loving strangle.  
  
"Sasami, what happened, what are you doing out here?!"  
  
Swaying slightly under the force, Sasami didn't lift her face enough to see more than her sister's mouth.  
  
"Aeka, is she-" Tenchi held his ghost in by his teeth, his sword fading out. A hasty, unfocused step or two and he was trying to find the little pink eyes himself.  
  
"Sasami, a-a-are you okay?" He tried to project kindness over ahead of paralyzing fear.  
  
Big brother and sister's voices kept getting quieter and more desperate in their attempts to coax out a response. Though consumed, Tenchi still whirled around battle ready at the sudden hum behind them. He lowered the sword after a moment, and turned it off after another, powerless and muted twice over. Ryoko's face was shadowed over by her hair.  
  
Still holding her little sister, Aeka looked down at nothing as well, face held in stone.  
  
"Where have you been, Ryoko?" The summer's deepest heat parted ways for the ice on the princess's breath.  
  
Two short steps forward, and Ryoko was ready to ignore the question. Without affecting her own withdrawal, she used it to sharpen a perfect imitation of her usual brash impatience.  
  
"Out with it, kid. What happened?"  
  
"Sei-ta..."  
  
As far away as her voice was, Aeka caught it, devouring it as she gripped tighter and shook in tiny explosions.  
  
"^Seita?! What about him?! What did he do to you Sasami^?!"  
  
Tenchi began to shake under Aeka's new volume, grinding his teeth at the ground.  
  
The Second Princess of Jurai looked up at everyone through her sister, and went meek with compassion pains.  
  
"He looked so sad." 


	4. Verse Nine is Charity

Standard Disclaimer: I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.  
  
Standard Advertisement: I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.  
  
Standard Procedure: Present all arguments and appeals in a clear and orderly manner.  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Nine is Charity-  
  
-Part 1-  
  
"This is what happens when a great deal of intelligence is invested in ignorance, when the need for illusion is deep."  
  
"I could also say that those who cannot obey themselves must be commended."  
  
-Trevor Goodchild (Character on animated series "Aeon Flux")  
  
***  
  
Slippery squish. Washu applied the crème to her pale and puffy wrist, too impatient to savor any relief beyond its foul odor. She wiped the excess on a nearby rag and flexed each neglected finger, watching critically for a vein to pop out, a digit to start moving on its own, or any other excuse to begin another rant at the juvenile, if not altogether childish doctors they had on this planet.  
  
"You can step up here now, Sasami." The newly medicated doctor invited calmly.  
  
Without lifting her eyes from the floor, the Second Princess took half a step forward, then looked up the length of arm holding protectively to her shoulder. She watched Aeka withdraw in hesitant embarrassment, recognized someone not watching so as not to be seen, and looked back down at the floor without resuming her approach.  
  
"I told you guys already, I'm fine."  
  
"Please Sasami, let Miss Washu make sure." Soft answered small.  
  
"It's certainly not much, and it won't be half of what my lab used to be for a while, but it's still better than anything this planet's doctors can offer." Washu thought aloud while making some minor adjustments to the reclined chair and its surrounding displays of lighted switches and wired wires. The heavy ones looked mostly sturdy on their extension angles, and the thin tips to flexible anchors were at least secure if at worst sharp  
  
One of them must have smuggled the matching head and wristbands to the examiner's third hand while she gently was adjusting Sasami's position by the jaw. Attaching the blackly uncomfortable gear took greater care if less concern. Washu walked back over to the control station with focus unflinching till something stiff and purple tickled the corner of her eye.  
  
"This might take a while, Aeka."  
  
Washu dictated to some buttons and almost finished inscribing the next letter to them till she noticed the lack of response. Looking up from the controls after a minute, she read the anxiety freezing all but Aeka's eyes beneath her bangs. A sigh and a few steps later Washu returned with a modest office chair to match her own.  
  
"You can have a seat if you like."  
  
Aeka blinked and blinked faster then accepted the seat with a short bow and a mumbled thanks.  
  
***  
  
Tenchi nearly slammed the screen door behind him, panting into his shirt as he wiped his face with it to even out the distribution of grime. Long strides brought the kitchen to him but the plunging ice in the water jug was just slowing things down. After nearly chocking on emergency relief he poured himself another and caught sight of the note on the fridge as he wiped his mouth. Removing the paper sharply and catching the magnet, then dropping the magnet, then replacing the magnet, he read what looked like Sasami's very legible and very girlish letters letting him know that she and Aeka would be in Washu's lab if he needed anything. With more effort than he would have liked he got the paper back under the magnet without spilling his water.  
  
It took a few seconds before he asked himself why the note still needed to be there if he'd already read it. He shook his head at himself, set his water on the counter and reached for the note. The feeling stopped him a few inches from the magnet and ground his teeth closer to glass. If intuition was an uneasy bond between a thought and a feeling then, since this particular dose affected him much more like the latter, he'd naturally have to fight it with the former.  
  
*Stop it Tenchi. If he wanted to keep them from you he'd do something a little more drastic than a fake note on the refrigerator. Just call him out like you always do and move on.  
  
Tenchi half frowned, semi scowled, and most bit his tongue to burn holes in the note. When nothing flinched he took a fighting breath to share through the every limb till the whole throat was wet and cool.  
  
"Is that all you-"  
  
Even the strong silent type of threat forgot not to interrupt sometimes, but at least tension could be in near-perfect harmony when it was consuming. Crystal tones accepted ice as it settled in Tenchi's glass. He almost turned to give it the first blow, quickly looking back at the message, unchanged. Swallowing another mass of hopeless panic, the note and everything else around him became real again.  
  
His breathing evened as he carried his water to the water closet. Halfway across the living room a faint maybe no sound stopped and crouched him slightly and ready to drop his water. Round two came quicker this time, always spreading senses open in a slightly larger circling net. Even as he considered the option he considered he might be trying to hard, but he still thought he felt a gust of heat from the nearest rafter. He swallowed and called out clearly.  
  
"Ryoko?"  
  
More of the same nothing answered.  
  
"Ryoko, are you there?"  
  
More of the same nothing repeated itself incessantly.  
  
Tenchi relaxed again and continued on, gathering up his net as he went.  
  
Ryoko phased her head out from inside the rafter and listened to Tenchi turn on the bathroom sink. She floated out and back up onto her usual spot, looking at nothing without enjoying it at all. This continued long enough for everything between Tenchi entering his room and starting the shower. Each action brought a different picture to mind and the same expression to her face. When the sounds started to blend together, she finally blinked long and heavy.  
  
Her right hand was open beneath her when she could see again. The picture of her and Tenchi had been traced over with a darker pencil. Some hair-thin lines stuck out around a few curves in the drawing, begging to no avail for correction. Forgetting how to enjoy it was one thing, risking it changing accidentally was another. She closed her eyes again and consumed her face with a miniscule strain, cupping a butterfly as closely as she could without crushing it. Resting knuckles to forehead by nodding up into them, support and practice for keeping sobs quiet.  
  
***  
  
The control station was a good ten feet from where Sasami sat, eyes closed and jaw calmed to escape the shower of bright lights and harsh buzzes. Turning off the sounds required focus and no room to pick anything out from the range of royalty and genius.  
  
Precious skin, even handfuls would only massage no matter how much they wanted to wring, and every accidental scratch to her wrist or knuckles tried to compensate.  
  
"Thank you again, Miss Washu."  
  
For being smaller again, Washu's hands needed the rest of her attention to make up the difference.  
  
Aeka continued politely no matter how much she wanted to clear her throat first.  
  
"For working so hard on---this."  
  
"Exactly, what ^else^ would I be working on?" Condescending simplicity examined chaos readings and made microcosm adjustments. At least it didn't expect formalities. At worst it didn't have as much patience. Aeka was fully transfixed on her sister, it was obvious even through Washu's side- glance, into her side glare, and around again to dead emerald weight.  
  
"And I said just 'Washu' will do."  
  
Easy enough to have been heard over the machines; even if facing them again, more than possible for a princess in thought to continue rather than respond, and now forgivable with a diplomat's rule to focus anxiety into urgency.  
  
"Miss Washu?"  
  
The remaining mechanical functions didn't require as much focus, or force as Washu gave them while tightening her jaw that Aeka didn't require a response.  
  
"Please for---please forgive me. As her elder sister I should never have let it come to this."  
  
What control was rapidly being lost from Aeka's words; they were rapidly piled on to the rot gathering around Washu's eyes.  
  
"I---I should not have even let it begin." A delicate hand trying to make it start over, Aeka breathed broken through her already trembling palm. Maybe a royal secret how she continued to enunciate.  
  
"^I failed her. He might have---oh Tsunamiforgiveme^!"  
  
She bent further into her hand and twirled away from the examination. A few near-expertly muffled sobs later and the instructor looked up to see through Sasami and speak through Aeka.  
  
"Are you done?"  
  
The machines bobbed about Sasami head with a series of projected tones and blinking lights that made withdrawn little eyes flinch even smaller. Undaunted, her sister managed to spread a newfound silence that made the slow movements to behold Washu's profile as loud as Washu's work, and Washu's voice penetrate in thick needles, frozen past sterilizing.  
  
"It's very 'noble' and all, but you know as well as I do that he didn't just pick this home by chance. He would have had his way with us one way or the other."  
  
Aeka's head began to hang as limp as her hands as all rigidity was being taxed by her eyes.  
  
"It's rather predictable and quite pointless for you to blame yourself."  
  
Washu sat back stiffly into the office chair that had previously only made the controls too far away. She barely crossed her hands and barely parted her feet to rotate directly into Aeka's face.  
  
"Though it is somewhat 'novel' to see such displays of frailty from you...when Tenchi isn't around." Teases and accusations seem like sides of the same senseless coin when folded up into bitter criticism.  
  
The first signals of Aeka's replacement of her most insulted moment were racing and clenching through her face quickly, but Washu had already begun the lesson on how to truly except blame, speaking to the First Princess through the machines again. First step through last step; it was all about denying your own right of emotional release.  
  
"In any case, ^I^ was the first one to---witness. The unnamable danger should have been clear to me even before that, but I guess I became too confident in my equipment."  
  
Aeka bit a tiny piece of her lip in Sasami's direction, then sealed everything together. She turned her wall, her retaliation toward Washu's guarded profile. She anticipated the moment the genius could know her own medicine cut with royal vengeance; the wait was short but the mix was inverted by the time Washu turned and reflected up into this blackened expression.  
  
"I agree."  
  
The fraction of Washu's surprise made the fraction of Aeka's sneer the same and better.  
  
"Maybe it's not like me to open up for anyone other than Sasami or Tenchi." Even princesses couldn't look violent suspicion down into a person so well, regardless of height. "But it's ^definitely^ not like you to truly admit a fault."  
  
Washu stood from her chair, grinding something horrid in the back of her throat and speaking it almost clean through barred teeth.  
  
"Do we know each other so well then?"  
  
By the lights and hums of well-researched science well-bred intuition looked ready to bring terror and revelation colliding. Not at all like patience, Aeka's stiff posture demanded an answer. Nothing but determination, Washu's angled pose would have the answer or nothing. Molten amethyst and emerald poured hatred into each other, searching the worlds between the noxious steam for traces of synthetic sapphire.  
  
The last of the automatic functions begin to wind down. Sasami's eyes relax tentatively but she does not stir. It takes masterfully hidden effort for her not to be noticed as Washu and Aeka rage to the point of collapse, to the exact point of collapse, to the exactly matched moment. Frightened enough by this search they'd begun, the first signs of tears were almost petrifying till they were seen as reflections. Charge broken, both women watch a tear roll down the others' cheek, breathing sharply at how red and alive the flesh looked through the water trail.  
  
Washu turned away and crossed her arms painfully tight while Aeka again breathed into her hand.  
  
It would be time to comprehensively analyze the results soon, but Washu was just as concerned with who would be the first to, hopefully, acknowledge the presence of shared guilt. If the thought wasn't echoed as the emotions were mirrored, then it rang out loud enough for two.  
  
*How could we have done that?  
  
"At least it seems we were wise not to tell him about Tsunami." Aeka demanded a recovery as best as a beggar could.  
  
Watching over Sasami rather than looking though her, Washu spoke for rationality as best a near-nerve-wreck could. It was hard not to sound when the answer burned her throat like no honesty is painless.  
  
"I only wonder if it was wise for her to reveal herself."  
  
"What?" The hush of air ate at Washu's neck.  
  
"We're acting like Tsunami scared him away, hoping it with all our lives. But, apparently," Washu swallowed hard and deadened, "no one really believes it."  
  
"Perhaps." Exhaustion gave Aeka's voice a clearer shine of the acceptance it couldn't carry.  
  
"It's just that, from what you all told me, Sasami didn't describe him as 'afraid'."  
  
Nothing left of the procedure but to noisily retract the instruments and display the cumulated data. Listening to Aeka's breathing grow faint and slow, Washu was ready to forget postponing doubt around Sasami.  
  
"Is---is he-" Aeka needed, frail for the world to see if only to have a single need granted. The question might truly exhaust her, just as it might take long enough in asking for Sasami to hear. Washu chanced prediction almost like compassion.  
  
"Go ahead and ask Aeka, there's no more room for criticism here and--- and no longer any point in worrying about flattery elsewhere."  
  
Aeka must have believed in force more than most diplomats, but surely believed in catching hesitations of guard.  
  
"Is he ^mortal^?"  
  
"Are you almost done, Washu?" Sasami snapped up both their attentions with a pitifully polite request. "I'm getting kind of sore."  
  
"Yes, Sasami." Washu answered promptly, with the convincing ease of an uncertain parent. "You can go now."  
  
Getting off the chair with more eagerness than her tensed body was ready for, she wavered a little before bowing to the both of them and walking quickly past, keeping her eyes hidden. Washu watched Aeka watch her sister as they followed not very close behind.  
  
"Sasami."  
  
The name halted before the couch and turned, hiding her eyes again.  
  
Washu forced a smile anyway.  
  
"It shouldn't take long to analyze the results, try to stay hydrated and don't stay still for too long," the smile couldn't be forced much longer and the good humor would hardly be touched, "w-why don't you go play with Ryo-ohki."  
  
For a moment the world could see Sasami's lashes fluttering confusion before she bowed out and dashed off calling for her friend.  
  
Aeka breathed deep through the departure, readying her own with slightly less guarded eyes.  
  
"Lady Aeka."  
  
"Y-Y-Yes M---Washu."  
  
Washu grinned to Aeka's side hopefully just enough to be grateful for the princess's attention.  
  
"Your question is valid, and I can answer it with some confidence, probably more than I could if I had the option of using my lab."  
  
Washu blinked slowly into her breath, trying to ignore Aeka's and softening her delivery.  
  
"I'm not sure if the answer will reassure you, heh," Washu couldn't let irony die, but didn't really want to laugh any more, "but it would probably entertain him."  
  
"It was almost certain after Ryoko---after we found your brother. I had to probe them both for more specifics, which probably didn't help matters much."  
  
Aeka looked over, disappointed that Washu's head was focused down.  
  
Science's hypothetical distance continued.  
  
"But the prominent theme remains."  
  
Procedure demanded she look forward, but couldn't force her to look up.  
  
"It's 'ambition', the stuff of grudges and obsessions. Only those bitterly aware of their inevitable end seek, not only to rise, but also to leave something behind. There's always room for miscalculation in this kind of thing, but if someone had all the time they wanted they wouldn't have savored, or created sensations the way he did."  
  
Washu began turning back into her lab, closing it behind her as she finished.  
  
"Simply put; based on what I've witnessed, and what I've learned, he shows all the signs of still ^pursuing^ immortality."  
  
***  
  
Tenchi sipped his stew and nursed the giggle Sasami had given him earlier; if it took an embarrassing gurgle in his stomach to produce then he would gladly pay up. The thick slur of rich meat and sweet vegetables tasted even better for being served late. There was a joke about too many cooks in the kitchen pulling at his collar, but the silent consensus was perpetuating itself again. He looked over to each place at the table for some good humor or even some bad manners to reassure him that the tension was imaginary and not delusional. All he noticed, again, were two empty seats.  
  
"Could someone please pass the bread?"  
  
At times these nearly lifeless requests made him wish that Aeka would just reach across the table like a toddler, maybe even knock over something. Some interruptions of sound only made silence more prominent.  
  
*I hate this.  
  
The ice had melted in the water pitcher already so when Washu poured it only cleaned the instrument when it could have tuned it.  
  
*I hate this. I hate this. I hate this!  
  
*I want to stand naked on the roof and call him out till I go hoarse. I want to hold up his head so no one in this family ever has to doubt their own eyes again.  
  
He chewed a lingering piece of gristle mercilessly. A few lines of anger grew on his face, his suppressed imagination reaching out like a starving child.  
  
*This is where he would spy on my thoughts and whisper in my ear that they'd have to doubt what they hear, and smell, and feel and-  
  
No one noticed as he slurped the rest of the broth from his bowl, and only Sasami responded when he rose with a sincere, if uninspired compliment. Standing there for a while, a businessman who's just forgotten his speech, or the one person in the group who actually thought there would be ^dancing^ at the dance, Tenchi retired to rinse out his dish. A few clinks of ceramic later and he returned with a fresh bowl and spoon.  
  
"I'm gonna go see if grandpa's awake yet." He informed any who were listening, expecting none to show it.  
  
***  
  
Tenchi eased the door open and, catching his hand before the potentially blinding light switch, stepped inside.  
  
"Grandpa?" The whisper was needlessly quieter than the door hinges.  
  
Yosho was breathing, clearly asleep or entranced with his own discomfort. Each half long enough to be considered a snore if it weren't flattened thin, clenching and withering again in his chest cage. First to be banished from Tenchi's mind and the room was a reanimated skeleton and his acute asthma, followed by a formless mutation suffocating under the weight of his own fat. After he set down the soup in the usual place, and after he cursed his imagination again, he let out a louder whisper.  
  
"^Grandpa? Grandpa, are you awake^?"  
  
The rest of the family was clearing the dinner table, quiet through the wall and stabbing through Tenchi's ears.  
  
"This stew is really good." Plain volume and empty tone made their offer.  
  
Sickly breaths grew louder then grew iron nails, dragging along stone, concrete, sheet metal, his skull. A lowering pendulum, each wasting sound swinging heavier onto Tenchi's shoulders, a flood of memories to mock his uncertainty, and a parade of futile plans left a wake of clenched and throbbing cells.  
  
"Grandfather. Grandfather, please wake up." Spoke up the extra calm that always precedes a shout.  
  
Not this time. Yosho was not hearing or was not responding and either way he was not changing his breath. Tenchi swallowed louder than his whispers and exited, leaving a crack open in the door, adjusting it with delicate precision, and inverting the gesture into a frustrated march toward the back door.  
  
"Lord Tenchi? Where are you going?" Aeka asked from the couch, turning uncomfortably with concern.  
  
Half way open, Tenchi looked at the small plastic screen handle and out into the night. Door gripped tighter, voice more detached, he defied the draft.  
  
"I need some air. If you turn in before I get back, then goodnight."  
  
Steady footsteps faded out into the field.  
  
"Goodnight." Aeka hung her head quietly for a moment, looked back toward the screen, and then looked up to the rafter opposite the one Ryoko usually slept on. Barely noting her rival's switched place, completely enthralled that a lost vagrant could sit and look at nothing with such disinterest.  
  
***  
  
He'd worry about grass-stain and grass-itch tomorrow, if he stopped running or even changed his course he'd have to release his energy some other way. For now the cool night air provided enough support for this mad dash.  
  
The dusty path scraped and slapped and almost slipped beneath him, his arms did half a pinwheel before returning to contribute momentum. The dry burn of pulsing breath shredded itself through clenched teeth till he dropped jaw fall for a feral grunt. He wanted to savor the salted gashes in his lungs and the salted slug in his mouth.  
  
Funaho's branches swayed gently, unafraid that the charging brute might plow into her.  
  
Tenchi slowed himself just in time to stay out of the small pond surrounding the long-rooted Jurain tree. Glad enough to be concerned with regaining his breath rather than anything else, he bent, clutched-kneed and clenched-eyed, to the abysmal face looking up at him from the shallow water. No wind louder than his slowly descending gasps as he tried to replace the memory of one voice with another. He would think of tranquilizing Goddess's reassurance, make it drown smug and sinister monologues. Back when it was still enough, determination had already told him it would only be a matter of time before he heard her real voice.  
  
"Alright," he exhaled with enough force to settle his lungs, "where are you?"  
  
He looked the trunk up and down for some inspiration on how to initiate quick contact. Thinking aloud sometimes helped him solve a problem.  
  
"I know Aeka said Jurain nobles have a special code for when they want to pray to you. But all I can remember is---is something about 'from the sea back to the earth' or something like that."  
  
Tenchi gulped and stared up through Funaho's lush branches, the brilliant stars above them, and into the cold black glass to reflect his darkening frown.  
  
"^Tsunami^!" He called out his opponent and appealed to his mistress. "Tsunami, I know you can hear me! Where are you?! I don't have time to learn any damn Jurain mumbo jumbo!" Tenchi calmed and stretched his lungs again.  
  
"Please Tsunami," tears clenched back in his fists, "please speak to me. I...I need you."  
  
Not even a rustle in the tree or a ripple on its reflection. Deeper breaths carried Tenchi to his knees, and he ignored the pebbles and twigs that were usually absent when he kneeled at the shrine. He spoke again with as much reverence as his budding misery would allow.  
  
"Tsunami, hear my prayer. By my birth and my life I beg you, speak to me, save me and my family the way---the way you did before."  
  
A breeze of dust scuff, then a gust of leaf-clatter. As Tenchi forced images of Sasami's future self into his mind, there seemed less left to clog a draining apathy. Anger fought back and fought in.  
  
"Show yourself! I know you can hear me from this tree, wherever you are!" He glared at the pieces of paper hanging from various branches. They swayed in the starlight, suddenly pale as a crumpled letter to The Seasonal Gift Giver in a parents wastebasket.  
  
"Is ^this^ how it is?! Save us once, then ^abandon^ us? What kind of a Goddess are you, huh? I've never asked you, ^or^ Sasami for anything before, but right now I don't care if you're busy or trying to teach me a lesson or whatever! I want-"  
  
It didn't feel as good to yell as he'd hoped, but grabbing his throat with a silencing pain had to have been reflex. At least it didn't feel as bad as staying silent.  
  
This lapse of thought whetted anger for the moment before a thin beam of omni-colored light fell from the branches to his forehead. One lapse deserved; he realized nothing was relief and even less was vindication. The stars and the moon swallowed themselves and left him in the familiar glow of Tsunami's chambers. Numb struck sympathy only with frozen.  
  
The Goddess stood as far from him as Funaho had been, aglow amidst the smooth geometry of ivory green steppingstones and crystal waters. Tenchi had remembered this place a number of times but had never envisioned himself on his knees. At the moment it didn't feel like enough and he wondered what fainting might feel like.  
  
"Welcome Tenchi, it is good to see you."  
  
Her voice enveloped him in silk sheets and warm water, the glimpse of peace he'd achieved when meditating in Hetmu's ship now echoing eternity. To be able to half shut a gapping jaw now felt almost empowering.  
  
"Please rise Tenchi, we have no need for formalities here."  
  
The air above the stepping-stones rippled and glistened on the water, partially obscuring the reflection of a sleeping Sasami. Never left by her smile, never let go from her softening eyes, Tenchi was loath to find the part of himself fighting brutally for freedom. It cursed whatever lack of strength and direction had taken his running legs, pounding the ground incoherently, then insignificantly as he realized he'd tilted his own neck to keep touch with her the whole time. Now she was standing over him, close to him, bending down and lifting him by the shoulders, steadying him even as her very hands begged a collapse.  
  
"Tsu-^Tsunami^." He gulped his whisper down in an invigorating mist.  
  
"I am speaking to you now through Funaho, we are not truly inside of myself, but I thought it would help you to see me like this again."  
  
She let him go, and again simply being able to stand upright slivered him some more confidence. He would not wring his hands, or cross his arms. His fists were almost tight enough to tremble under the next wave of Jurai's Life.  
  
"I am here now Tenchi, do not be afraid."  
  
Tenchi struggled to close his eyes so that lowering his head might be easier. It was.  
  
"Please let me help you, if I can." This thread of uncertainty might have only been for his sake, he thought, but in any case it brought his sails back up to the storm.  
  
"^Tsunami, when Sasami...when Seita...what happened^?" His timid whisper sounded louder than it felt.  
  
Some of the brightness faded from Tsunami's face, and Tenchi felt guilt bend in his stomach like an iron ball. Though, rather than pass it along, he felt himself split his nails and grind his teeth into it.  
  
"I'm not sure if I can give you the answers you want." She hesitated around sympathy's improvement.  
  
Tenchi's response came in a stutter of almost morbid humility and a choke of rising tears.  
  
"I---I'm sorry Tsunami. I just can't figure out why you would-"  
  
"I can understand your confusion, Tenchi."  
  
The ball cracked and cut him, stinging his shoulders back and his eyes tight. His tongue flattened against the roof of his mouth violently enough to tear his jaw up into itself, and he spoke in a disintegrating rasp.  
  
"All this time---where ^were^ you?!"  
  
Tenchi savored Tsunami's surprise for the moment he imagined it was there, then froze, shrinking his insides back to see only a kind of stoic acceptance guarding her serenity. He'd already accepted humiliation, but was not yet dead enough to overlook the real change. The shoulders sinking under the part of her brow and the pout of her lips; it was all too subtle to have been restrained.  
  
Tiny tapings into his throat were ready to say something with too little breath to hear and mouth hung too wide to read. It didn't occur to him that Tsunami might not hear even if he couldn't hear himself.  
  
"^I-I-I---for-give---me.^"  
  
Tsunami blinked slow and reopened her eyes kindly, though still too honest and remembering for recreating life as they could have before.  
  
"Do not apologize Tenchi, I should not have hesitated to try to answer you."  
  
The Goddess blinked again and the prince almost thought he saw her fight not to leave her eyes on the ground for a time.  
  
"It is only that---Seita asked me the same thing.  
  
So well aware of every cell in his body, Tenchi felt the opening, the engulfing of his eyes all too well. He waited to know each of the subtle details involved in cutting his own legs out from beneath him, he waited longer, not even swaying yet. So very ready to surrender every memory of himself, so long as it would halt the full absorption of the Goddess's answer. All of it so much like waiting for nothing in the presence of immortal certainty.  
  
*Seita---doubted her, ^accused^ her, just as he does with everything else.  
  
*And now---now I've done the same thing.  
  
As much as it had pounded the ground to escape her, the same feeling scratched for his hands to plunge them down to grovel at the base of light. Again it grew distant, exhausted in the face of all strength he remembered, from all the strength he'd exerted, from all the support he'd lost in the name of separating his name from that nameless infection.  
  
"Did you...did you destroy him?"  
  
She blinked slowly, catching and holding tight to his renewed, if last-standing tone of life. Her hand reached towards his chest as she already drew in his eyes.  
  
"It is not my place to destroy life. I give my children power to defend themselves, and each other."  
  
The touch returned him, released him in two quick tear lines and a spinning light washing clean through his stagnant blood. It was almost enough not to notice the most fearful tone a savior could convey: even amidst the gentile feminine ethers of her voice, many auroras shimmered black with regret.  
  
"I can only directly intervene when Jurain blood as a whole is threatened, or when great protectors need me."  
  
Tenchi could breath easier, but couldn't accept; but couldn't shake his head.  
  
"But, but you helped me when Kagato was-"  
  
"Yes Tenchi, but you are to be a great protector of Jurai, and of your own people as well. That is why you are able to wield the lighthawk wings so. I have taken great care in watching over your development."  
  
"^What!?^"  
  
"Do not think on terms like 'destiny' if they do not comfort you, just know that you are neither alone, nor insignificant in your struggles."  
  
Tenderness numbed what it could not dissolve in Tenchi's features.  
  
"I had not intended on revealing this to you till much later, yet my only hope is that this does not change the compassionate nature that makes you so ideal."  
  
She managed a small and relatively mundane smile, giving Tenchi room to avert his eyes.  
  
"Then what about Seita," hateful terror turned into a serious matter, "How can I fight him when you're the only one who can even-"  
  
He looked back up at her, pleading everything into her to see she could embrace more.  
  
"Could he be listening to us now?"  
  
He watched Tsunami's lips flutter lightly and he tried to follow her eyes as they searched the ceiling of her chamber, falling back to his with a soft, human, almost enticing grin.  
  
"If he is, then he is, and even if this," she shrugged with another smile, "is just another of his tricks, it doesn't change what you know."  
  
"But what do I-"  
  
Tsunami giggled into her hand, almost teasing.  
  
"He wants to be someone's mentor---but you'd make an awful apprentice."  
  
Her smile invited for the sweet moment before it demanded his own, turning the world upside down to drop him like snow globe flakes onto fresh warm sheets. The laughs might have only been sobs to begin with, but they were surely sobs soon enough. Tsunami felt so very natural as she hugged him to her shoulder  
  
"Shhh, Tenchi. I accept the blame for not thinking him dangerous, you and your family have all had to be stronger than anyone should."  
  
"But---But I can't---I don't know how to-"  
  
Tsunami began to back away, gently leaving Tenchi to his own sway of now relaxed tears.  
  
"Be comforted Tenchi, I was able to drive him away by doing little more than speaking."  
  
The chambers began to darken as Tsunami began receding back towards the center, smiling warmly into Tenchi's panic.  
  
"But what about my grandfather?!" Desperation resurrected half of itself in a drawling shout. "And what has happened to Mihoshi?!"  
  
"The lives of your family are in their own hands, and in yours. My place is to aid, not to govern."  
  
She continued floating backwards, head down, arms crossed beneath her robes. The room darkened till nothing was alight but its visitor.  
  
"Please! Wait! What if he comes back for Sasami again?!"  
  
Simple blackness drew back into the moon shade beneath Funaho.  
  
The ground was crushing into his knees again, then cutting into his hands as he tried to propel himself up to his feet.  
  
"Tsunami!"  
  
The cry extended past the stars then dissipated into Funaho's branches. Anxious breaths began to drive him, but an answer surrounded his sense, cooling the blood in his boiled lungs.  
  
*Remember Tenchi, Sasami and I are one. As a protector I must protect myself.  
  
"But what do I do?!" He spun in a semi circle  
  
*Be brave Tenchi, and kind as you've always been. And hold tight to your love for your family.  
  
"But I...but he-" His pleading voice sank, taking the rest of him back down with it.  
  
*Rest now. I will always do all that I can, and you are more capable than you know.  
  
He repeated her name into his limp hands, the timid sound like the chilling breezes at his back. The effort it was taking to simply approach forgetting his physical body was hardly enough to even keep his teeth from chattering. The last look at Funaho echoed with Tsunami's voice, but was only sparsely pocked with Seita's eyes. It was enough to give him a moment's encouragement and the first push back toward his home. Wishing he'd been careful what'd he'd wished for, every step reminded him that he really was too exhausted to think on difficult things.  
  
***  
  
A few toes peaked out from beneath the sheets. One shuffle and a groan later they were joined by half a kneecap. The extra pillow elevated Tenchi's head almost enough to help his neck and just enough to dangle open his jaw to snore over any shivers.  
  
It would take a sound like this one to stir the prince, newer than Washu's humming deterrent to any would-be bunkers, but easy and classic as memories of pre-digital ticks. Like a self-replicating line it fell in one after another, denting sleep little by little by now it was almost destroyed. They'd dodged the drone of snores and continued through the barrage of last resort snorts and coughs. The misplaced ambiance persisted till it finally struck the biggest whisper onto the smallest drum.  
  
Tenchi awoke so slowly he almost felt the guilty pleasure of an overslept weekend, but the light and the day were wrong. Snuggling back into himself, inverting his morning stretch into a reluctant fetus, he welcomed the darkness his tightly closed eyes offered. No such luck; the sound was still there, a soft whisper marching too close to his ear.  
  
The groan that makes every dedicated alarm clock fear for its life; Tenchi's mind did a stumbling dance with itself through the fog.  
  
*Who left the faucet dripping in my room?  
  
*No, wait.  
  
*Is there a leak in the roof?  
  
*But it's not raining.  
  
Exasperated, Tenchi sat up quickly then remembered to open his eyes. The room was submerged in dark water, so he rubbed his eyelids down to the sinus. On the next inspection he could properly distinguish that he'd awoken where he'd fallen asleep. No faucet, no puddle swelling on the floor, just divided rectangles of moonlight.  
  
It must have been car light after all, he thought, as it gradually scanned over dirty clothes and unmemorable homework. He followed its path, waiting for it to thin and dissipate, wondering why it seemed more like a spotlight till it stopped at the base of a curtain, no a dress, no a robe. In any case it was black, and in this case it was Seita's.  
  
The scream left its skin before it left Tenchi's throat, clawing its way back down into his guts, leaving the skin to drift out in a sallow gasp.  
  
The garment clung to the impossibly shrunken and manipulated diameter of his waist, some sharply triangular corset for clay doves with no bones almost didn't leave enough cover for hands to fold behind. Drinking the hour in to a wine glass, the shoulder padding spilled out into his slender chest and swallowed his long neck. Hair drawn back and black as the rest, it gleamed a little in the redirected light, but not nearly so brilliantly as tonight's face.  
  
Molten ivory for blood, it never rippled or even wavered amid the petrified fury strangling itself around every direction of Seita's eyes. His lips were only a wood carving, and a bitterly lifeless on at that. Smoke darkened electric blue, this grass stain and road rash streaked horizontally through the air before his waist, extending from one hip to two meters past the other. Wide as duct tape, it stretched with the same abrasive call mingling with a slow slide of fresh blade over old music string.  
  
Another one half as long and wide grew to the same right before his eyes.  
  
Another one half as long as that would have been barely enough to seal his lips and fill one ear.  
  
Tenchi could feel himself age through the stillness that followed and the seemingly random places on these latest accessories that melted their color and dripped it on to the floor.  
  
It happened three times before Tenchi could estimate the intervals to a minute; the lines retreated into Seita the way swords would, never an effect to his petrifying glare even as they impaled his already frail- looking waist, cheeks, and skull.  
  
It happened two and a half more times before Tenchi realized the lines were appearing in the same relative position to Seita's body every time he levitated forward.  
  
And he levitated forward, still a statue, motionless, a doll.  
  
There was only the length of the lowest line between them now, and Tenchi managed to drop his petrified back against the wall, thumping his head, doing nothing to breath more than a few times for every small advancement.  
  
Seita's face didn't change, if his eyes had grown slightly more narrowed at the sudden movement it could have been an accident or an illusion of the closer proximity. Yet, normally after he moved into his lines for a dripping minute, they dissipated to reappear in position, this time they stopped solid for the same interval, and another.  
  
Someone puckered lips very tightly and sucked the air very forcefully out of Tenchi's ears. The painfully retracted whistle spread a paneling of the blue scratches over him and his bed. None of them gave off more than air for the senses and none of them wavered as Seita advanced through them.  
  
Blue-violent emptiness still holding Tenchi by the heart, he was still rational enough to notice that Seita had stopped in the center of the spread when each of the lines before and behind him began retreating, collecting inside him.  
  
Again: three horizontal lines and Seita within arms reach.  
  
None of these blue ribbon stains lost their rigid balance as they curved around to form a dome cage on the bed.  
  
The white skin could have would have been less terrifying had it been lined or lipped, shadowed with some of the harlot reds or dandy violets, even a sneering turquoise. Blue intensity standing alone amid the shadow engulfing white wasn't what he was never ready for but had at least expected.  
  
The glare could have would have been less debilitating had it spurred forth a sinister chuckle, or a megalomaniacal roar, even a sinister velvet tail fresh for the quotation collection. Locking eyes with an apparent mute clenched his own throat shut, backing whirlwinds up into his already bursting skull.  
  
*Smile.  
  
*Where's that haughty grin, damn you!  
  
*^SMILE^!  
  
*I can do this but you have to smile---please-please tell me you're going to smile.  
  
Soft shuffle. Tenchi reached for the sword hilt beneath his pillows.  
  
***  
  
In on of the hallways dividing to connect Jurai's great palace two women kept and matched step in a way the standing-watching guards were never likely to understand. Just the same and against better judgment, a few grabbed at their own piece of the conversation.  
  
"You had the dream again, didn't you sister?"  
  
"I'm sorry if I woke you." Funaho answered, taking a moment to build a small portion of her voice.  
  
"It is alright, I was already awake, and our husband sleeps like a log, as always." Misaki made a timid offer of humor.  
  
"Yes," Funaho lowered her head from cool to cold, "so long as 'the emperor' is not disturbed."  
  
"Please do not speak of our husband in such a way, it is his place to be stubborn sometimes."  
  
Funaho did not respond. Misaki looked over at her sadly, then back at the path they shared.  
  
"He knows that change is inevitable, but it is his duty to make sure that Jurai is prepared to welcome it."  
  
Tired of the cold, Funaho's voice simply darkened.  
  
"He has willingly alienated his own son and grandson, he has neglected to tell us the depth of his plans, and he has done nothing to soften the lie so many of the people idolize. He is working for Jurai's future by covering his mistakes."  
  
Misaki stopped walking, reflexively scanning to make doubly sure there were no longer any curious guards in the hall. She waited almost incredulously long for her fellow queen to do the same.  
  
"How---^How can you say such a thing^?"  
  
"Isn't it true?" Funaho answered in a plain halt and turn of the machine.  
  
The queens stared at each other, slowly exchanging their pain and compassion through silent and nearly weeping eyes.  
  
"Sister-" Misaki approached with open arms, embracing Funaho gently enough to release even a reserve as strong as hers. Obsidian fell against turquoise, tears mingled on blushing crème. Misaki pressed her lips against her partner's forehead, shushing and smoothing compacted emotions.  
  
"Forgive me Lady Misaki, the dreams...I know they are not empty." Funaho fought through smaller sobs, slightly encouraged. "And they have only worsened, something is wrong, something terrible has happened on earth these strict limitations on communication cannot be helping."  
  
"There now sister," Misaki cooed, "are you ready then to tell me about your dreams."  
  
Funaho sniffed and stepped away, managing an attempted chuckle for how devious a negotiator her sister could be. She calmed herself and spoke with almost enough strength to bring her eyes up.  
  
"I dream of an emptiness. A terrible, twisting emptiness."  
  
"Go on." Misaki supported after a pause.  
  
"It. It is not just an idea; I have seen it, a silent and colorless hole opening up over my son and his grandson and all their family. It seems as if it will draw them in like a great vacuum, but it simply displays itself, draining their wills like some---some ^insane star^!"  
  
Misaki did not respond, when Funaho was finally able to lift her own head she saw her sister staring at the floor, pale and muted.  
  
"Yes, I know it is strange and unsettling, but I've dreamt of it almost every night for months now."  
  
No reply.  
  
"Please Misaki, say something."  
  
"Sister," the second queen raised her eyes with fearful seriousness, "in your dreams, is there ever a being---a-a---accompanying this emptiness?"  
  
Funaho's eyes widened, but her voice faltered and she nodded weakly. Misaki continued.  
  
"Is he...rather like a tyrant, a tyrant and an artist?"  
  
Both queens commanded each other's lack of color.  
  
Misaki assumed Funaho's movement to be another nod, and closed her eyes tightly till she heard the lighter queen pounding forward with uncharacteristically heavy steps. The off-world queen's hand was shockingly strong as it jerked her eyes open and began pulling the rest.  
  
"Come sister, we must wake the emperor."  
  
***  
  
Blue light blazed above Tenchi's head after passing through Seita's throat, the sword barely held steady enough for another strike.  
  
Seita hadn't moved, didn't become more colorful, and wasn't smiling.  
  
But he spoke, sinister velvet through and through and thoroughly soft enough to soften up. Tenchi could remember predict and relax enough to focus his grip again, however, strategy was overlapped and interrupted during the interpretation.  
  
*Did he just ask 'What am I?'  
  
The former guest had returned his countenance as perfectly as something that couldn't speak, but Tenchi still ground his teeth and narrowed his eyes for a potential repeat offense.  
  
"W-W-What did you say?"  
  
Tenchi could taste how foul his breath was from bedding before brushing. It seemed appropriate for this tone he must have dug out of a rotting wound. This line of thought almost stole from the anticipation of forcing, he hatefully prayed, Seita to act more like himself.  
  
A little softer, quieter maybe, but no condescent or even impatience, sinister velvet restated the question.  
  
"I want you---to tell me---what you think I am?"  
  
A few lingering arm tremors made the light hum as Tenchi, in a nervous ritual, positioned the tip beneath Seita's chin.  
  
"What kind of stupid question is that?" He almost spat at the still unmoved figure, "My grandfather-"  
  
Neck tendons pulsed as Tenchi felt bastions of softer emotion melting down into the rest of his rage. "I don't know what you did to him, and I don't even care 'why' anymore!"  
  
The sword was shaking a little more and Seita was the same.  
  
"I don't know if it takes Tsunami's power to scare some sense into you, but you won't have anything more to do with my home till you kill me."  
  
The shaking stopped and the sword doubled in width and radiance. For the sake of his family, Tenchi tried to keep unstoppable rage hushed without sounding like his opponent.  
  
"Well come on then! You ^twisted^-^coward^! Whatever it takes I will-"  
  
Seita closed his eyes gently, and Tenchi prepared to feel his teeth crumble against each other as he pulled back to make what he hoped was an imprisoning thrust to stop the universe.  
  
The blue of oblivion returned thus the blue of Jurai retreated, falling from Tenchi's hands like a bird breaking against a window.  
  
Once wooden, now ice lips moved with sensual enunciation, drawing in the whole of perception like a moth to an electrified light. Every memory of sensation crushed and melted itself into a needle pointed toward a single ambition; nothing existed beyond The Ghost of Madness, Hell existed within nothing. Still no painted smile, but no memory of believing it would matter as Tenchi at once remembered the portals and experienced them being chewed up like a fist of decadent grapes. Seita was only leaving his mouth open so that the juice could drip and smack as he reinvented the post- immortal rasp.  
  
"^You---are NOTHING!^  
  
"But you will tell me---^WHAT^---you think I am."  
  
High and wide shoulders sighed a little for the first clear breath, and perception returned to Tenchi and itself, causing the former to fall back to the wall again, limp and almost pale enough to compliment what he accepted now as his executioner.  
  
"^Evil^."  
  
It was petrified rabbit's breath, but it was quick and alive enough. Seita took it like a mannequin while Tenchi's motion was limited to simply angling his head slightly closer to the wall, though unsurprisingly unable to break the gaze.  
  
Head lowered, blink lengthened, and someone got their smile. Half- sided, and perhaps uncertain, it was to be remembered even if it remained in black and white.  
  
"I see."  
  
Unfeeling creativity saw its way to a genuine imitation of acceptance amid the lingering realities of the subjective. He saw as Seita would, brilliantly, curiously, and covertly starved for opposition. The scholar's seductive textures of voices would take care of the rest as he stepped back, leaving one foot forward to strike out bare and pale amid the night and the black. He angled his own head to the side and swung a glance upward.  
  
"You are more than honest, and correct enough," he breathed a little break and smiled a little more, "yet, just as your ^honest^ vanity would destroy me; my ^correct^ vanity will not allow me to destroy myself."  
  
The bow took Seita directly to Tenchi's eye level and dissipated the blue bars connecting him to the bed.  
  
"But you don't have power---honest ^or^ correct enough to destroy me, so I must trust that I am correct and give you an honest chance."  
  
Tenchi's eyes widened impossibly, but Seita didn't seem interested in savoring the asphyxia between anger, fear, and confusion. With fluid and unforeseen balance he turned on his heels while still bent, straightening a little more and mumbling loudly with each step.  
  
"^And so we must give...truth and honesty...the violation...the revelation...my truth for his honesty...my honesty for his truth...^"  
  
"What---What are you talking about?" Tenchi's mind leaked out of his throat in a thin steam, almost throwing his hands up when Seita whirled around with tense features.  
  
"'Evil', Tenchi. You have made your choice, honest as possible and thus correct as necessary."  
  
A deep breath and a long step put him back in position.  
  
"And so: if my success must come from the failure of others'---then my failure must come from another's success."  
  
Slow but even, human and obsessive for metal against stone, Seita spoke down to Tenchi like the first person he'd seen in eons.  
  
"You must see; I must injure myself to give you a fighting chance, and I can only injure myself by truly ^helping^ you. There is little doubt so it is more than correct if not at all honest.  
  
His hands flung forward from their cage behind him, fingers growing long and clutching tensely. Tenchi clenched first for the movement, but drained again in a sub-sound gasp as he felt a sliver of the unnamable mouthful he'd nearly die to forget.  
  
Seita looked down at the exaggerations with mouth pulled to the side in disappointment, watching them shrink back to proportion with a nervous gulp and a cooling whisper.  
  
"I know of an elusive problem, a question that wails for justice at the pit of you."  
  
Straight and tall again, he tried to breathe deep to speak calm. Unaware or uninterested that sheer blue intensity was about to make his audience burst.  
  
"It would be a small trouble for me to show you the answer Tenchi, but a tremendous consequence. We would be on even and honest footing and, most importantly, you would have a chance to---'repay me' for my services."  
  
Tenchi tried to speak but only made a tiny choking sound. Seita closed his eyes, folded his arms carefully, and dropped his head.  
  
"By the content it is an easy decision, but by the context...I'll give you some time to consider." He lifted his head to the skylight, starring beyond his reflection.  
  
Tenchi could hear the own short inhale, and helplessly endured a confusion choke his former guest easily ignored.  
  
"If you let me help you, it will present an opportunity to destroy me."  
  
Directly stated up then plainly stared down to Tenchi's wavering position, Seita took a step back into an oblivion blink. The following dizzy chills curled the young man into himself, his exhaustion, and incoherent dreams.  
  
***  
  
^Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum^  
  
-Verse Nine is Charity-  
  
-Part 2-  
  
Age before beauty depart. Age before beauty abstain.  
  
Only a word a touch is asked---to give back incentive withstanding.  
  
Only the gift the moment is needed---for selflessness so very demanding.  
  
Age before beauty implore. Age before beauty remain.  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
The morning hurried its goodbyes and left Tenchi in the care of the afternoon. Dimly aware of the film in his mouth and the crust in his eyes, he smeared his hand down the length of his face.  
  
The painful blur of daylight and the tempting recall of his bed would have to be overcome. Shuffling under a pained groan, pulling his head down by the back of his neck; squinting in any direction didn't encourage much of an outlook. Each heavy and uncertain step echoed out the bare-foot slap against the wood floor. He hoped he was steering toward the kitchen, and away from the aftershocks of unmentionable dreams and worse if he didn't keep convincing himself otherwise.  
  
Another good yawn and a few more stretches; make it up the hall, past the couch, and the pile of blonde curls, and he'd be just fine.  
  
"Good morning, Tenchi."  
  
Gentle acknowledgement, that always helped.  
  
"Guh mornin Mee-ho-sheee."  
  
Tenchi held his hips and bent back, his yawn locking first his jaw, then the rest of him as he gaped over at someone glancing over.  
  
"Mi-Mihoshi!"  
  
He whirled and flung himself back against the wall before slouching anxiously forward, Mihoshi winced and face the living room again lowered her head, eventually rising from her seat to turn and give him a small bow.  
  
"Hi Tenchi, did you sleep well?" She twisted her clenched hands. "Sorry for coming in without your permission."  
  
"Wh-wh-what! Mihoshi, when did you get here?" Still waking bits of paranoia rattled and quieted his enthusiasm.  
  
"I-I. Sorry, Tenchi," she hung her head again, "I landed here pretty early this morning. Your father said you were sleeping really hard, so I told him to just let you wake up on your." Looking up at his still bewildered expression, she lowered her head again to start another meek apology.  
  
"Landed here? But, Mihoshi, how-"  
  
Aeka emerged from the kitchen, softening the air with tender diplomacy.  
  
"She actually managed to set her ship down quite well, sorry to have had breakfast without you, but you did seem to need the rest." Tenchi breathed another step closer to consciousness and relaxed at the effective guise of peace. Mihoshi had already prepared her blush in the short time before he looked back.  
  
"Uh, yeah, I tried to land Yukinojo as quietly as possible. He's safely under the lake now. If...if that's okay?"  
  
"Of course it's okay Mihoshi! My Gods," Tenchi reassured her enthusiastically, circling the couch and circling Mihoshi in his arms. After the initial surprise she returned the embrace with the same humble and almost timid courtesy.  
  
Aeka held her breath, then slowly engorged it. Tenchi moved away from the officer, but kept hold of her shoulders. The sound of him elaborating on 'their' worry and 'their' relief gradually melted into a drone as Aeka continued towards calm, yet in the context of emotional reflex she looked for her rival.  
  
Resting her chin on the table behind her wrists, Ryoko just stared at them. By the distribution of color and weight she actually looked less alive than Tenchi had moments earlier, though, Aeka thought, this had become almost commonplace.  
  
*She looks like she could use another 700 years.  
  
Aeka's thoughts surprised her: to have almost said something predictably insulting but to have come to the observation with mostly pity. She frowned and returned to surer ground.  
  
*This perpetual intoxication isn't helping anyone.  
  
Hearing Tenchi babble on into many double questions prompted a tactful interruption.  
  
"Lord Tenchi," she called out loud and sweet, but cleared her throat apologetically just the same.  
  
"Lord Tenchi, Sasami and I will have lunch on the table very soon, why don't we all sit down and have some tea before we ask any questions.  
  
"Oh," Tenchi blinked dumbly, "sorry Mihoshi." Head lowering thoughtfully for a zombie, his mumbles matched his pose. "Yeah, lets have some lunch, I'm starving."  
  
Mihoshi returned his smile and repaid Aeka with a thankful look. The moment she noticed Ryoko's almost trancelike stare flowing over her and Tenchi, she looked down again.  
  
"Good 'afternoon' Tenchi," Sasami smiled a gentle tease, "did you sleep well."  
  
Tenchi looked down as he rubbed the back of his neck, but did not include the usual nervous laughter.  
  
"Uh, yeah, thanks for letting me rest up guys. Still, I wish I could have greeted Mihoshi when she got here." He noticed her increased blush beginning to pale and simply stared as long thoughts swirled around wide ideas.  
  
*Am I the only one surprised to see her safe?  
  
Before predictions could flood in, he let his eyes fall on Ryoko.  
  
She looked as exhausted as he'd felt the previous night. Her eyes running on stale fumes as they drug themselves over various areas of the house, all the while managing to avoid him. They made contact for a moment before Washu sat down at the table, still in her adult form and humorless face.  
  
"Tenchi, I take it you've welcomed Mihoshi back already."  
  
She didn't even go for a sleep joke.  
  
"Uh, yeah, sort of." He concentrated on cooling his tea.  
  
Aeka and Sasami brought in the sandwiches, distributing them in even silence. Everyone was served and seated, and remained too aware of the issues at hand to speak. Hunger pains twisted him, but he could barely bring himself to look at his food.  
  
"So Mihoshi," Washu began seriously, "do want to fill Tenchi in, or would you like me to."  
  
Mihoshi, shied away from the scientist's gaze, but offered a few short, shy, and thankful glances to the princesses. She spoke timidly again, calming meekness continuing to overshadow any resemblance of her unfocused whine.  
  
"Thank you, Miss Washu. You'd probably do a better job at telling the story than I would."  
  
Washu lowered her head, cleared her throat, but looked up with slight surprise when Mihoshi continued.  
  
"But that's okay, I'll tell him the best I can, maybe I'll do a better job this time." She looked up a smile for Tenchi before quickly retreating back into her tea smiled, and quickly looked back at her tea.  
  
The new relative maturity continued deeper and Tenchi noticed a slightly more subdued but no less overt curiosity round the table.  
  
"If you don't feel like talking about it now, it's okay." Beginner's tact offered.  
  
"No Tenchi," she sipped her tea, dismissing his support almost defensively, "waiting wont help anything. I-I think we all need to know what happens around here."  
  
"Okay, Mihoshi. What," Tenchi still swallowed despite himself, "what happened?"  
  
One breath and a slight constriction of limbs was all it took to get the officer started on her emotionally steady, if even sedated report.  
  
"The last time I saw you guys was before I took," she clenched her jaw for a quick moment, "before I took Seita on another patrol with me."  
  
Tenchi leaned forward for support as Mihoshi's head drooped a little more, but to his surprise, her voice became even more focused.  
  
"I liked him, it had been a while...since I'd decided it would be better for Tenchi and me to just be friends.  
  
"It was kind of nice to think someone might come along who might like me back, I guess. Everyone was probably pretty happy with the idea, but-but I really don't blame anyone for what happened."  
  
An agonizingly though blessedly short moment passed for Tenchi too keep himself from gauging the other's reactions to this previously unmentioned decision.  
  
It surprised Tenchi that she was able to say it all before pausing for a breath, or any other intermission. He considered that the other women of the house had already had an experience with him before Mihoshi's absence; but the significance of this was interrupted before it could tighten its hold.  
  
"I---I tried to show him that I liked him. Just, sort of, made the first move." Her voice finally started to soften on dying batteries.  
  
Everyone watched the top of her head for the first few shakes of a breakdown. Aeka already tightened her throat in a vain attempt to halt the first tears rising in her eyes. She fought every terrible moment from the now long past projection of her sisters fall to the all too recent day of her brother's. She pushed against the day they'd tried to share, to describe each of their sessions.  
  
*Lord Tenchi cried then, almost as much as Ryoko or myself. Surly if Mihoshi can contain herself through this a second time then these details she left out the first time must have been less traumatic.  
  
A few locks curled down on the detective's forehead, but she raised her eyes back up again just enough for the princess to see stillness.  
  
*Or---or something far worse! She's acting almost as withdrawn as Sasami did after-  
  
Aeka moved to look at Sasami like a rusted but anxious machine.  
  
*Sasami! I kept her away this morning but I forgot---I can't let her-  
  
A hasty command stumbled around handicapped in the dark of Aeka's throat, swallowed and nearly forgotten as Mihoshi spoke again.  
  
"He got angry. I thought he was going to-" Mihoshi silently chewed or choked on something in her monotone, "but the next thing I knew, Yukinojo was flying into one of his portals, and-and I guess I blacked out. When I woke up he---just---smiled."  
  
Aeka almost sighed in relief, Mihoshi had told essentially the same story Sasami heard from her sister, save the detail of what had made Seita angry in the first place. The rest should fall in shortly. Small comfort, but comfort just the same.  
  
"I sent out a hale signal, but apparently we were out of range of any GP vessels or stations. It was pretty scary," Mihoshi admitted modestly, "but I just asked Yukinojo to go in the opposite direction we were going before."  
  
She raised her head and forced a weak smile for everyone to see. A single tear made a path down the right side of her face.  
  
"In just a few hours or so we were back inside GP patrolled space, and a cruiser came out to take us back to the nearest station. When I finally had to explain to them how I got out there I said my engines malfunctioned, or something like that, but then the lieutenant said that I was farther away from my sector than my ship could ever go without refueling at least nine times."  
  
Mihoshi lowered her eyes again.  
  
"So I made up another story about getting too close to a strange worm hole and I guess they figured it sounded like something I would do.  
  
"Soon as I got the chance I tried to contact you guys, but," she swallowed, "by that time Washu's machines were already off-line."  
  
The story seemed to end as Mihoshi finally picked up her tea and nearly drained it. Everyone waited till the saucer settled before waiting again for Tenchi's response, then waiting again.  
  
Tenchi merely guarded his tea, stone silent. Washu looked over at him with a measure of professionally distant concern then turned back to Mihoshi.  
  
"I'm sorry Mihoshi, I didn't think anything I could easily do would help."  
  
"It's okay Washu, I'm just glad we're all together again."  
  
They both managed to miss eye contact with each other while speaking in the same tone of hollow reassurance.  
  
"Me too." Sasami's second quickly raised everyone's attention for the few moments before it was stolen by a lethargic shuffling noise at Ryoko's corner of the table.  
  
"^Oh C'mon^---can't you just tell us what really happened?"  
  
The deadpan slur could have come from Ryoko's posture, being curled and curdled into her folded arms. Aeka almost expected to hear a peeling sound as her rival lifted her head up to stare at Mihoshi with rusted eyes and waterlogged mouth.  
  
"What-what do you mean." Mihoshi's childlike shyness returned with added passivity.  
  
Ryoko chuckled, definitely not amused and maybe sinister.  
  
"You know Mihoshi, we haven't even told you ^our^ parts of the story yet, but we know there's more to what happened than him just 'getting angry'."  
  
Aeka moved her sympathy to anger to fear to anger from Mihoshi to Ryoko to Sasami to Ryoko. She stood up with palms set into the table and shouted.  
  
"Ryoko! Stop this at once, I'll not have you acting like this to Mihoshi," her glare wavered by sharpened, "or in the presence of Sasami!"  
  
"^Oh ghuive it a resht prinsesh^," the slur darkened again, "she's not a child and neither is Sasami anymore. And our 'detective' just said," a limp finger propped up on an unsteady elbow dangled in Mihoshi's direction, "that 'we all need to know what goes on around here'."  
  
Aeka's nails made a few pained notches in the table. Ryoko just rolled her eyes from the ever-reddening royalty to the withdrawing police presence.  
  
"So tell us Mihoshi, what did he really ^do^? What special treatment did you get, huh?"  
  
Ryoko began rising, but her head still wobbled and she was having a hard time straightening her arms into support beams.  
  
"Out with it Mihoshi! We know he wouldn't waste the opportunity of having you all alone, so you might as well tell us because here's something ^you^ didn't know: we still don't even know what he was going to do with Sasami! All we know is that it took that damned ^Tsunami^ just to scare him away!"  
  
Between the intoxicated rant interwoven with words shouted for emphasis, Aeka began to shake while Tenchi and Washu both kept their heads low. The scene changed little even as Ryoko's voice lowered to a throaty and almost sultry interrogation.  
  
Tenchi and Washu kept their heads low during the intoxicated barrage, while Aeka began shaking to her very frame.  
  
"Was it ^that^ bad? Did he do something even ^worse^, did he actually ^touch you^, did he-"  
  
"Stop it! You horrid, drunken, MONSTER!"  
  
Everyone at the table recoiled took the cue to jerk their heads up for a better recoil, Aeka simply continued more controlled but no softer.  
  
"How can you even include yourself in such serious matters when the few wits you have are swimming in sake?! You disgusting...dispic---not a single-" Aeka's lecture broke into frustrated incoherence and was thus easily interrupted.  
  
"Drunk, am I? Well 'your highness' maybe I'm not drunk enough, hm? Ever think of that? Do I have to remind you me remind you that---^I can only see through his tricks when I'm drunk^! Maybe I'll need a few more just to make sure he's not sitting right in the damn kitchen!" She swung an arm in the general direction and knocked her tea to the floor.  
  
Everybody stared, horror-pity, inside-out.  
  
"Maybe," she began again even more darkly with a looser finger directed at Mihoshi, "he's sitting right here, impersonating Mihoshi with ^his^ version of what happened to her!"  
  
"Ryoko!" Aeka couldn't work enough anger into her shock.  
  
"Or maybe it's ^you^ princess, hm, I'm sure he would have loved to put on your clothes and ^water down my drinks^!"  
  
"^Your^ drinks?! You steal your sake from that poor grocer down the road!" Aeka bellowed.  
  
"HA! How would you know that if you couldn't see ' everything'?!" The scalding foam behind her fangs kept her movements unsteady, but she managed to rise and meet Aeka's eyes.  
  
"Mr. Misaki surly wouldn't be able to pay for all you've drank since-"  
  
"Since when, Aeka!? Since this ^thing^ decided to make our lives a living hell?! Oh, you're right of course; it wouldn't have to be Mihoshi or you! 'It could be anyone'! All he'd have to do is make a quick switch, he could be Tenchi, or Washu, or Tenchi's ^dad^ even! For all we know the whole thing with Tsunami was another trick, and he's impersonating sweet little Sasami till he gets the chance to kill us all!"  
  
Ryoko had to look around the aurora tips of her index finger at Sasami, but could see clearly through the haze of old rice and fresh salt that the younger princess had just been given devastating news by a callous criminal. The wide and watery pink jewels drained the anger from Ryoko's face and pulled her back down in a disheveled heap.  
  
Her arms curled into each other on the tabletop to receive her weighted head.  
  
"For all you know, for all ^I^ know...it could be me."  
  
Air froze for the half-minute it took Sasami to rise from her seat and scurry over to Ryoko's side, wrapping her hands tenderly around the mass of chaotic hair and trembling shoulders.  
  
"It's okay Ryoko," Sasami pitifully tried to churn her own distress into comfort, "it's okay, we know you're only trying to help."  
  
Everyone stared at the freshly inverted spectacle, each envying Ryoko's release and coveting Sasami's comfort in their own way, save Mihoshi, who sunk her head a bit deeper for the epilogue.  
  
"He said that even though he preferred making ^other^ people...do things, it was even better when someone made a false accusation, that it would always have a bad ending that way."  
  
Mihoshi looked up, the sobs in her voice held back by some fog or metal wall.  
  
"He said that 'the strongest pull towards the of heart of oblivion was ^doubt^'. I think that he doesn't care how upset we get, so long as we stop trusting-"  
  
Aeka looked over in disbelief. The capture echo of Seita's tone; it seemed like they were all going through the same misery she and Washu had barely endured earlier. At the roots of her all was a desire to hold Sasami and hide within Tsunami, to bring everyone together in a massive embrace to shut this blinding wake.  
  
She only hung her head, ashamed for her own lack of control.  
  
"Listen everybody." Washu spoke evenly, beginning with a calm sip of tea. "We have to stop ^blaming^, and we have to stop ^doubting^. Maybe Mihoshi's right about what he's really after, and until I can get my lab running again we have to keep our heads on straight."  
  
By the time everyone, including Ryoko, had given their attention, Washu was already moving to clear her place.  
  
"Besides, there's still a good chance that Tsunami did more than scare him away for the moment. All this paranoia just makes things worse, so today lets try to relax and be glad that everyone's safe."  
  
She rose and looked towards Nobuyuki's room, lowering her head again and whispering just loud enough for Tenchi to overhear.  
  
"Almost everyone."  
  
Silent but fighting to be anti-solemn, each of them helped to clear the table.  
  
Tenchi began a late start on the field as Washu would stop on her lab. The rest of the girls got an early start on their television immersion.  
  
***  
  
The pick swung heavy and loud into the dry ground, singing against a rock more sharply than needed to cut out Aeka's soft announcement from a safe distance.  
  
"Dinner will be ready very soon, Lord Tenchi."  
  
She breathed for another try but relaxed it to watch him a little while longer. A warmed smile eased up her face.  
  
"Don't you look handsome and strong today, Lord Tenchi." Aeka said in a sure whisper, smiling brighter as he continued obliviously.  
  
"Oh, and so modest too."  
  
Flattery weighted a hand to make sure the giggle got nowhere. She cleared her throat and smoother her kimono, proper once more for a second before an empting sigh. With the last dimple of light gone from her face again the wasteland would resume, her feet now as grounded as the rest of her.  
  
Tenchi set the tool down and reached for his water bottle. Aeka waited till he put the cap back on before approaching.  
  
"Lord Tenchi, Dinner will be ready soon." She thought she'd said it too loudly by the way he turned.  
  
"Oh, it's you Aeka, you almost startled me there." Tenchi exhaled.  
  
"I-I-I'm sorry, Lord Tenchi." Aeka bowed nervously.  
  
"It's okay. I was just finishing up here, anyway." He grabbed the pick in one hand and his water in the other and walked towards her, face down or lower.  
  
"Are you-" She began as he reached her shadow.  
  
"Yes?" He asked politely, but continued his trek towards the house. Aeka forcefully picked up her feet.  
  
"Are you---Are you all-right, Lord Tenchi?"  
  
She watched her limited view of his face soften and lower further, instantly cursing herself for not asking instead 'how are you'.  
  
"I'm well enough, Aeka." He answered softly without taking his eyes off the trail. "How are you?"  
  
"Me?" She answered nervously. "I, well-" she lowered her gaze but soon felt Tenchi's eyes on her and had to confirm her suspicion.  
  
It must have been pained concern, but his eyes were even softer than the subtle edges of the approaching evening. Aeka turned away with a helpless blush.  
  
"Are you sleeping any better?"  
  
"M---Maybe, a little."  
  
"I'm glad to hear it."  
  
Aeka bit a tiny portion of her lip.  
  
*He's dwelling on something new, I can hear it in his voice.  
  
A surprisingly cold breeze washed over them, and she rubbed the shiver from her arms while forcefully swallowing the rest.  
  
*But, no. I can't take any more drama, not after this afternoon.  
  
"The autumn is coming early," Tenchi stated plainly, almost to himself, "we had a hot but short summer, usually that means we'll have a long winter."  
  
"I see."  
  
*No. No! We can't talk about the weather now. But, if we start talking about 'him' again then...  
  
"We've got a nice sunset to walk home to tonight." Tenchi looked up with a hopeful smile, urging Aeka to follow.  
  
"Yes." The background glowing forward around him, she felt it cooling some emotions and tempting others to the surface.  
  
"I'm worried Tenchi." She almost blurted out with a serious clenching of her hands.  
  
Tenchi was silent and almost unaffected for a moment.  
  
"About, Seita?"  
  
Aeka gritted her teeth, and breathed slowly.  
  
"No, I still refuse to give him the satisfaction, but I'm worried about everybody else."  
  
"I see."  
  
"No Lord Tenchi, I don't think you do. I'm worried the most about you." Formality submitted a strand or ten to urgency. "You're still the strongest out of all of us, but I doubt we'll be able to function as well if you don't show it."  
  
Tenchi's eyes regressed or sought out the sunset.  
  
"You know how much I---I care for you, Lord Tenchi, but I can't help feeling sometimes that you don't want to confront the situation."  
  
"What about Ryoko?"  
  
Tone, promptness, and content almost struck her over in three directions, leaving a lightning whisper at the pyramid's eye.  
  
"^What^?"  
  
"Ryoko, she's still a better fighter than me, and if I gave her all her gems back she'd probably be just as strong."  
  
"T-Tenchi!" Aeka stopped walking and stared at him. He stopped and turned an almost defeated expression onto her. But this only delayed Aeka argument for a harsh moment.  
  
"You know as well as anyone that we can't fight him like that! Washu was right, the only way we'll have a chance is if we stay confident. Besides-"  
  
Aeka lost her breath and hung her head, slowly easing it towards the house, "I don't think we can rely much on Ryoko."  
  
She noticed Tenchi's confusion from the corner of her eye. Without looking up, she turned back and paid tribute to confession.  
  
"She's been keeping herself intoxicated for months now Lord Tenchi, this-" she bit her lip a little more, "this whole ordeal seems to have only made her more unstable. I know it's not really my place to judge her, but I can't help it. I was-" she forced her head up, "I was rather hoping ^you^ might talk to her."  
  
"Me?"  
  
Aeka nodded down at his apprehension.  
  
"If she'll listen to anyone, she'll listen to you."  
  
He stood in silence for almost a minute, then hefted his tools and headed towards the house again. Aeka blinked in confusion and hurried after him.  
  
"I'm glad to hear you're concerned about Ryoko, but I don't think she wants to talk to me anymore than-" Tenchi trailed off to anyone else and let Aeka find the other paths.  
  
"I see." She whispered loudly enough for him to easily guess at her response.  
  
"I'm sorry Aeka, but I don't think there's much more I can do, when-"  
  
Aeka felt her heart jump at the sudden weight she heard in Tenchi's throat.  
  
"When I went up to help grandpa, Ryoko had been the last to see Seita. It was like---like she didn't even know I was there." Tenchi swallowed, and Aeka's lips began to quiver and clench.  
  
They treaded on silence, mulled over the concept, and bore into their reactions.  
  
"I don't think Seita's gone, Aeka, and I'm not---not sure what he's after next, but, whatever it is he-"  
  
"Please, Lord Tenchi, please don't speak like this," Aeka begged pitifully, wrapping her hands around his elbow and upper arm, thrusting her forehead into his shoulder.  
  
"I can't bare to hear you sound so---so ^surrendered^!"  
  
Tenchi adjusted himself thoughtlessly to the extra weight, fighting down anything that tried to rise up on his breaths. He looked down at her, softening under her storm, and cut himself to keep walking.  
  
Stopping at a loss at the tool shed, his thoughts fell prey to the scavenging and parasitic emotions invited in by neglect. Wisdom armored and hollowed itself with cynical apathy, only to retreat from a princess's grasp.  
  
"'Surrendering'---'awakening', they sound like the same things sometimes."  
  
***  
  
Square squeak. Washu eased the door open, keeping her head low and breathing through her mouth as naturally as possible. There was still enough light outside to see him by; at least there would be when she finally opened the blinds. The floor creaked beneath her taller body and she almost wished her smaller feet back.  
  
Dusk light entered in handsome pinstripes across the sickly bundle in Nobuyuki's bed. Washu braved a nasal inhale and wasn't awarded but was at least reassured. The state of the art air fresheners she'd hid and hung and adhered throughout the room were working nicely. She could still smell the inevitable of course, sharp and draining beneath the sterile waterfalls and engineered blossoms but ^beneath^ them nonetheless. Her tall shadow progressed over him. Gentle movements must be non-threatening and realistic; no false fears or hopes should either of them be awake or dreaming.  
  
"Hello?" Knowing better than to waste her time with whispers, and knowing him too well to resist tenderness, Washu sounded as strained as she was.  
  
"Yosho?"  
  
Scans shifted, watching over him then frowning down at the crude machine she'd needed to settle for. It monitored for any change and thus far seemed bored with tracing simply lighted numbers across her multi-darkened face. It was a small but still far too significant concern that she'd been avoiding the mirrors ever since her decision not to waste power on her child form, outside the lab at least. Only recently had she considered without shying back that it was no longer subconscious, or singularly motivated. Correct and right enough, she'd thought into herself, there wasn't any room in her mind for maturity or vanity. Thinking this into herself again, she turned away from the machines and back to her friend.  
  
"I know we already told you that Mihoshi came back, but no one bothered to ask when you thought you'd be ready to see her." Smoothly, though not yet ready for softly, she cleared her throat in further preparation or procrastination.  
  
"She---she seems to be okay. I examined her of course, and physiologically she checks out normal." Washu looked away from his face and let her eyes fall and rise with his chest, whispering to herself for him to hear.  
  
"Just like Sasami."  
  
A tiny rasp in Yosho's breathing cracked a whip in Washu's ears, and she swiftly turned towards the source. It repeated then dissipated. She'd heard it before, a few times like this, and a few times during her work amongst other patients dying of degenerative diseases. She'd been trained expensively not to think on it.  
  
"Try to savor the food a little longer than usual tonight, Mihoshi's helping and I'm sure she'd like to hear that you enjoyed it." Washu managed to sound tender if frightened as she sat down with her back to his knees, letting her hand spread over his chest.  
  
"^Do you think you could do that, hm^?" She caressed her whisper into his emaciated sternum.  
  
Something small and plastic dropped in the kitchen, and she half-smiled to hear the homey sound of Mihoshi's apologetic whine.  
  
"^If not for Mihoshi, then at least for me^?" She lowered her cheek onto his chest, hands rested above her head, hoping the sheets felt even cooler and softer to him.  
  
"Please." She smoothed the sheets in a quiet and clear whimper.  
  
"^Please^." Sobs clutched into the very fibers as her whimper broke into a sob.  
  
She'd taught herself expensively, during the last few instances such as this, to carefully rest against him rather than on him. It was almost as good as holding him, she thought into herself. He had started to get delirious between the new nausea-suppressing sedative, false encouragement that less and less of the concoction was keeping him asleep longer. The coma would punctuate itself any day now, but she told herself it would not divide her resilient joke: if anyone was going to kill him it would be her.  
  
"C'mon you old fart, you know it's not your time yet! Don't leave me here with these kids! I---I need to have you here---with me!" The humor and desperation melted together, leaving her with an almost whiny voice, further slurred against Yosho's chest.  
  
The sobbing continued unaffected, throwing in a few good chokes and a sniffle for good measure. Tired and sore should have made it easier for her to rise to give him more air, but the urge to hold their bodies even closer prevailed. A few more sobs and she began to feel dizziness and a light tickle against the back of her head. The tickle turned into a comforting sensation, like a thin hand smoothing wild hair.  
  
---  
  
Aeka watched Tenchi's back, his shoulders low even after he'd deposited the heavy pick in a wheel-barrel. She looked at the tools, knowing that they should not be left outside to rust. Before kindly reminding him of this, it occurred to her that Tenchi might not have his grandfather's discipline for much longer.  
  
Thoughts corroded as they clashed together. Swallowing them, and crushing them in her fists, she calmed herself against another explosion. To her surprise, Tenchi noticed that she hadn't followed him after he broke away.  
  
"Aeka?" He began to turn curiously.  
  
"Y-Yes Lord Tenchi?" She collected and propelled herself just in time to catch his glance mid-turn.  
  
"I'm---I'm sor-"  
  
"Please don't. No more apologies. Can't we, for just one evening?"  
  
Aeka knew she was looking up at him with large and unsteady eyes. Wanting to be stronger but not wanting to turn away, she could only wait for his reaction.  
  
Tenchi walked passed her and onto the nearby back porch, offering small consolation as he passively held the door open for her.  
  
"I'll try."  
  
A breath later she was able to hurry in with her chin up and eyes hopeful. But she quickly turned to watch Tenchi close the door behind him. But she quickly turned back at the sound of racing steps and a blur of red hair.  
  
Aeka held her breath for Washu to crash into Mihoshi, but she skidded to a halt moments before a quadruple zeppelin collision. The detective and the princess both winced just the same.  
  
"Washu?" Tenchi's voiced confusion echoed Aeka's as both their eyes followed what could still only be made out as a ruby fireball woman blasting her way into the sick room, arms laden with packaged snacks.  
  
Mihoshi and Sasami in the kitchen, Tenchi and Aeka in the back doorway, and Nobuyuki in the living room, their confused glances all interwoven. The sound of Washu's muffled voice, engaged in what sounded like excited conversation, firmly unified and dominated their attention. Thankfully, Washu was kind enough to emerge again from the room a few minutes later and before they forgot to breathe again. Science herself was strangely winded.  
  
"^He...sayshe'sfamished^!  
  
"What!" The equivalent of everyone responded.  
  
"Yosho...I think he's finally snapping out of it!" An adult Washu with such a manic smile would normally be terrifying, and indeed some of the family remained a little pale.  
  
"Are you sure?" Tenchi gulped as he strode over to where Washu was leaning against the couch for support.  
  
Certainty lowered her head and wetted her throat. A low chuckle shook her hair like a rabid beast preparing to attack from beneath the brush. Tenchi felt something inside him cringe and whimper at her response but barely had time to put his hands up before she grabbed him by the collar and pulled his face in to be devoured by an oversized smile.  
  
"Am I sure?! Am I sure?! I'm The Greatest Genius in the Universe! Of course I'm sure!"  
  
No one could do more than stare as Washu enveloped Tenchi's head in her chest to better feel the vibrations of mad-scientist laugher.  
  
***  
  
Standard Disclaimer:  
  
I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.  
  
Standard Advertisement:  
  
I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.  
  
Standard Procedure:  
  
Present all arguments and appeals in a clear and orderly manner.  
  
Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum  
  
-Verse Nine-  
  
Charity (Part 3)  
  
"Because you see---I understand the will to evil.  
  
The will to evil is like an iron in a forge---There is only one way to shape it (on right).  
  
With a ^conscience^ which is the ^fire^!"  
  
-Trevor Goodchild  
  
(Character on animated series "Aeon Flux")  
  
***  
  
The dinning room managed to relocate itself around Yosho's bed before long, yet after short Washu was already trying to excuse them all for the sake of his rest and her concentration. Each eager distractions lingered, unsatisfied with their tastes of whatever was re-nourishing their finest age.  
  
Though his voice had still been as withered as the rest of him, he'd spoken more through shared comforting and comforted glances. Only after asking about Ryoko did the vibration waver.  
  
"I'm sure she's around somewhere," authority cleared her throat, "she's been just as worried as the rest of us, but she shows it by...being extra watchful."  
  
Yosho nodded, keeping his eyes closed.  
  
"Okay, all of you, this is your last warning: remove yourselves or be removed."  
  
Arms crossed, stare leveled, she cut the visitors down and out one by one.  
  
When Tenchi had finally and hesitantly closed the door behind him, Washu let her breath out and her shoulders down. She turned to offer Yosho an affectionate smile, but he was already asleep. Taking as much care as ever to be silent, she moved a chair to his bedside and admired her new watch.  
  
The voices outside gradually dissipated while the monitors and Yosho's breathing became more pronounced, hypnotic, if she thought she could have brought herself to focus. Peaceful if she could bring herself out of the new war.  
  
It wasn't long before she was clutching her skull and breathing with far less tranquility than her patient. She eventually turned the back of the chair into a chin rest, imagining Yosho's recovery and all it would require, imagining Yosho's sickness and all it might explain. In thinking so much about timing she was able to forget about time.  
  
When everything finally felt sufficiently revaluated and rehearsed, she rose from her post. Ignoring whatever quarantine she might have forgotten anyway, Washu leaned over and kissed Yosho's forehead. With a timid, almost resistant expression, she craned her head upward and smoothed the patient's hair.  
  
Quiet as it might have been, Tenchi's bedroom door echoed down through the ceiling.  
  
***  
  
*It was a dream.  
  
Tenchi lifted the sheets and squeezed his temples. His head felt rather like a grinding engine, running on fumes into the ground.  
  
*You're a fool Tenchi, no one could have slept through that.  
  
The mattress was hard as he pressed his head through the pillow.  
  
*But no one could have lived through that.  
  
The ceiling was blank above him, demanding. The blankets were sealing him in, but his jaw still quivered out a tear.  
  
*He'll be back.  
  
Breathing deep dried his lips and breathing desperately cracked them.  
  
*He said 'some time' to think about it.  
  
*What was it about being 'correct' and 'honest', and then...then about 'helping me' and 'destroying him'?  
  
Tenchi gradually moved to his side and to a ball small enough to fit in a large crib.  
  
*'Some time'...is that a day, a year? How much is his concept of time deranged by---by  
  
His sheets parted with all the grace of a cheap tarp as he sat up and hauled his legs over the side. Tight fists pressed in to stabilize his head through each breath of memory. The fight raged on, seeking revelation out beyond blue and white, swords and pits.  
  
*I've got to---got to remember that his power gets more intense not just by staying in that place, but by driving people-  
  
Tenchi clenched his face inward to the bone, pulling it through his fists and between his forearms.  
  
*Damn him! DAMN HIM-DAMN HIM-DAMN HIM!  
  
A breath captured and a stare leveled, he swallowed and blinked darkly.  
  
*No Tenchi. You can't start giving up now---not when it looks like ^he^ may be doing the same.  
  
*But it must another trick.  
  
*But if it is then boiling my brain over it is exactly what he wants.  
  
*But then what am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?!  
  
His hair felt greasy, then the rest of him did, but he needed to make sure his skull was still hard between his hands.  
  
All the thoughts he'd thrown out at himself and the cold would have to amount to something soon. With Mihoshi back and his grandfather beginning to improve Seita must be either annoyed or pleased with his plans, but obviously not done.  
  
Tenchi tried to plan till it hurt, then continued in hopes that pain could still inspire. Eventually a new fear crept in, spreading through his lumbering whirlpool like a cloud of soured milk. Unlike the burning vibration of his earlier musings, gears began to move more like titanic pumps, slow and eerie, back and forth. It felt like it should be building, but it stayed perpetual. He heard his breathing match what sounded like the swelling obsession needed for some arduous task or guilty pleasure. Like a less practical and more experienced thinker, he began to think about his thoughts.  
  
Seeing the shadow of lost control could be almost fascinating; he almost wished that Seita would wait another year or ten.  
  
*I really can't do this. Even if he truly wants to give me a chance to destroy him, how am I supposed to do...how am I supposed to know anything?  
  
Elbows on knees began to lose hold of Tenchi's head. Little by little, it sank, ready to hide back under the sheets like a frightened boy, or simply bounce and roll along the floor till it reached a safe hiding corner.  
  
*Please. Please don't make me fight this alone.  
  
The silent request vibrated his spine like a whisper in his throat. For a moment, giving up had dulled his thoughts like a long gulp of warm sake. Chaos wasn't completely quiet inside him, but at least it was incoherent. He didn't have time to wonder if the knock on his door snapped him out of it at the right time.  
  
Tenchi looked at the handle with a flash of terror; the light raps like footsteps and heartbeats and unsheathed blades and any second now the end would walk through the door. He forced himself not to give into the rising laugh.  
  
*Only---only ^he^ would---would knock at...at 3:30 in the morning then wait to see me turn white when I open it and see his latest nightmare.  
  
Whoever was knocking knew he could hear them and continued waiting. So close to laughing, so horribly close but, ready to bite through his own jaw, he would not go without one last fight.  
  
*I---^I^---was the one who invited him.  
  
He stood on stronger sticks and thought better about the wood lump by his pillow.  
  
"Tenchi?" Washu's voice was calmer than any second batch of knocks  
  
He lost hold of his breath, dropping, twisting his face.  
  
"Are you awake, Tenchi?"  
  
Apparently she hadn't heard him, and seconds after answering again he hoped she wouldn't again. His voice was dead but so was the rest of the house.  
  
"Who is it?"  
  
Hesitation defined silence for a few seconds before Tenchi's uncertain hopes were given a clear answer.  
  
"It's me, Tenchi." Washu was serious, not friendly like he might expect of an imposter, an average one.  
  
Carrying all things in consideration, it took Tenchi a while to reach his door and a little longer to open it. Under different circumstances he might have laughed at having to raise his head to meet the originally, and still unusually taller scientist. Under different circumstances she might have made a joke instead of taking out both sides of an obvious question.  
  
"Would he have knocked, Tenchi?" She crossed her arms; stern mentors could be the most sympathetic. Tenchi lowered his eyes again.  
  
"Maybe."  
  
Uncharacteristic to her, and thus unlike any impersonation of her, she opened the door the rest of the way and walked past him. Tenchi watched her in slightly sobering surprise, and checked for jealous onlookers as a force of habit before closing the door.  
  
Washu pulled his desk chair up to the bed to sit him back down. He obliged, distracted enough to be dignified in his sleeping shorts without crossing his legs or covering them with the sheets. Another force of habit kept his eyes above chest level.  
  
"Having trouble sleeping?" Tenchi asked weakly, knowing he didn't need to add 'too'.  
  
Washu looked down at her hands. She felt him waiting for her to crack her knuckles or tent her fingers. She crossed her arms.  
  
"Are ^your^ nightmares all about the same thing?"  
  
Tenchi's eyes widened at how matter-of-fact she could be, not at all wondering why he wasn't used to it.  
  
"W-What?!"  
  
"Tenchi, I doubt I'm the only one who's noticed the state of peoples' eyes around here. No one's rested well since---a long time.  
  
"But you in particular look like you need more than the extra you got today. It's understandable, of course. I've had to help almost everyone else in the house, myself included."  
  
She bent her head and fingered a rattle in her pocket.  
  
"Would you like some help?" She began in an even tone, strangely confessional for someone asking questions. Though he knew his silence would further incriminate him, Tenchi couldn't seem to move.  
  
"You're pushing yourself too hard, and you can take it from a genius; it's not always a good idea."  
  
He kept his ears open for the comforting humor in her voice, though he didn't expect to find it. Instantly weary and lusty at the prospect of finding a little undisturbed sleep in a little pill, he gulped. Before he could show tentative disinterest, she changed, or perhaps eased into a different subject and a softer tone.  
  
"It's kind of strange, don't you think?"  
  
"What is?" Tenchi felt dull asking such a question, and duller for asking it so nervously. He let his head drop before Washu could raise hers.  
  
"Today, of course. Isn't it strange that Mihoshi should come back, and that on the same day Yosho should start making such a dramatic recovery?"  
  
Bewilderment sounded out of place in the voice of intimidating reason, and he merely waited for it to change.  
  
"I mean, in a way it's odd that she even came back at all."  
  
She must have been preparing to see his shock, but all he could manage to bring his head up with was appalled confusion. Washu wasn't finished watching her hands.  
  
"Technically, he pulled a kind of 'bullfighter' move on her. He obviously knew where she would come out on the other end so I still don't understand why he didn't just send her out the few light years it would have taken to strand her permanently, I've little doubt he could have done it."  
  
Washu absently massaged her palms to get at the increased tension in her voice.  
  
"Heh, it probably wouldn't have been that much harder to just send her into an asteroid field, or into even into a ^star^---but he didn't." She seemed to sigh while Tenchi held half his breath.  
  
"And why, ^why^ would he put Yosho on death's door if he wasn't going to keep him knocking?"  
  
Washu turned her head lower to the side, thinking to herself for Tenchi to hear.  
  
"^All on the same day---Mihoshi and Yosho both come back to us on the same day^."  
  
Tenchi's own nerves were envying Washu's hand massage and he was almost ready to demand what she was getting at. Another part of him was still ready to strike at her, just to make sure. He felt his fist clench on his lap. The feeling elevated then dissipated with the extended silence, so extended that he was relieved, for a moment, when she spoke again.  
  
"So, what did he say to you?"  
  
She was ready to see his shock this time, almost timely enough to ignite the fist he'd nearly disarmed. It didn't occur to him how many people he might wake with as loud a question as he wanted to respond with, but his face must have said enough.  
  
"You're not half as good at hiding it as everyone else was."  
  
Tenchi gulped, eyes burning his hands as they ate at his knees.  
  
"^I---it-^"  
  
"I dare you."  
  
Her voice may as well have yanked him up by the hair, and her eyes may as well have pined him to the wall.  
  
"Say it, Tenchi. Tell me it was 'just a dream'. I'll knock you out right here."  
  
Already intimidated eyes fell to stare at the shaking fist she held ready for him, raising again only when it relaxed or exhausted back into her lap.  
  
"There's something I think you should know. After seeing you today, I wanted to tell you before I finally told anyone else."  
  
She met his eyes, deadly serious to desperately uncertain.  
  
"Tenchi, Yosho---your grandfather doesn't remember being poisoned anymore; all he remembers is facing Seita in his office, then imprisoning him."  
  
Tenchi tried to keep his hands from hugging into himself, and might have been able to do it with more time between the steps of Washu's presentation.  
  
"He asked where the sword was," Washu added to the strain of his uncertainty before finally dropping her eyes to accept her own.  
  
"It just doesn't fit Tenchi. When," she swallowed time, "he kept saying that Seita had poisoned him he said it so---so---^weakly^. It was like he'd already accepted defeat. It wasn't like him at all, that's why I thought, that's why I ^still think^ that it was some kind of hypnotic suggestion. And now-"  
  
Tenchi almost cringed to hear her let out a breath not unlike the ones he'd been making before she knocked.  
  
"Now he thinks his sickness is the result of the exhaustion of trapping Seita in the sword, he-" she lowered her voice to an anxious whisper, "^he thinks he's still in there^!"  
  
"I'm just lucky that everyone had the tact not to bring anything up. But now---now I can't help but think that you must know something new, that Seita either ^has^ gone, or is just working up something even more-"  
  
Tenchi watched her clutch the sides of her skull, only more violently that he had. He wanted to do the same, but still couldn't move very well. Her mumbling was almost a mewling whimper.  
  
"^Please, I have to know^."  
  
It slipped out, automatic and lifeless.  
  
"He said he'd give me time to think about it."  
  
Tenchi took his turn to wait for her shocked expression, but realized soon enough that she'd been exercising the special kind of patience and manipulation most scientists and all mothers were allowed to use. She looked to the side of his bed and spoke calmly again.  
  
"And this was last night."  
  
"Yes." Tenchi did his best to sound in control of himself, if not, if perhaps never the situation.  
  
"So what are you thinking about?"  
  
Tenchi hesitated and Washu pinned him to the wall again, if a little more gently this time.  
  
"What did he ^say^, Tenchi? It sounds like he made you some kind of offer, and---if it's anything like what he offered my daughter-"  
  
Finally enough to make him rise, Tenchi was on his feet looking down at Washu in enough time to have given or taken a testing punch and perhaps another. He still considered it as he flexed his fingers at his sides.  
  
"^Are you saying I would even consider-^" Tenchi almost hissed.  
  
"No, of course not I-" Washu remained calm, and never raised her eyes.  
  
Forgetting that a snap, a break, will have a collapse in the wake of its energy, Tenchi bounced a little as he fell back to sitting, then slouching on his bed. He found Washu's gaze and blinked rapidly, nearly losing his voice with the strain needed to keep it.  
  
"What does it matter," Tenchi waited without expecting Washu to flinch, "sometimes I wonder if maybe ignoring him is the only way to make all of--- ^this^ just-"  
  
Some kind of will softened Washu and placed her hand on Tenchi's knee as he let his head fall with bitter yet watered down apathy.  
  
"It's an idea I've actually given some serious consideration, along with the theory that ^I'm^ just loosing my mind." A quick exhale was hardly a laugh.  
  
"I've also considered that Seita is actually an ectoplasmic projection of psychokinetic schizophrenia."  
  
She was more than ready to catch Tenchi's eyebrow as he meekly lifted one in new, thus distracted confusion. Her smile softened further.  
  
"That any one of our messed up heads could have actually 'created' him."  
  
Tenchi calmed, but couldn't smile again as she couldn't shield him anymore.  
  
"So far though, I'm beginning to think he might soon be more like Tsunami than Kagato."  
  
Tenchi listened as she started to breathe again, not as obsessively as he had been earlier, he thanked the stars, but she was clearly just as desperate for answers. He knew speaking on his next-first instinct would offer little comfort, he only hoped it wouldn't be worse than another stretch of silence.  
  
"I think so too," he began after a few throat relaxing exercises, "I tried to kill him last night but...it wasn't like the first time."  
  
Washu's eyes filled in the rest and made it easier to continue.  
  
"All of us remember that---that draining feeling whenever we got close to one of those portals, but, last night-"  
  
"He's become more powerful, hasn't he?"  
  
Washu semi-interrupted, semi-extended his break, perhaps intentional, perhaps futile; Tenchi dug in deeper to stay upright, but only had to whisper harsher to go on.  
  
"It---it was like he almost ^was^ that place, just like Tsunami feels like she ^is^ the power in the lighthawk wings. I could barely even move, it's all still illusion I know, but---but they're ^right inside my head^."  
  
Tenchi breathed and tried to make his hands stop shaking for a moment, never bothering to see how Washu was taking the news.  
  
"So, I guess you can imagine how confused I was---still am, after what he told me."  
  
He listened to the chair squeak as Washu leaned forward, but his voice still needed too much strength to lift his head.  
  
"You know how he likes to speak in riddles and all, so you can understand if I can't remember everything exactly."  
  
Resting long enough to fall back, to rest his head and shoulder to the wall and beg more encouragement from his interrogator. The distance was further reflected in his voice.  
  
"He said that I was 'correct enough' about him being evil, and that he'd have to help me to make himself more vulnerable. It was something like: 'If you let me ^help^ you, it will present a real opportunity to ^destroy^ me.'"  
  
Tenchi dropped the burden and clutched his head again, though more gently.  
  
"Then he left. I'm not sure how much of 'some time' he'll take to come back."  
  
Waiting for Washu's response was trial enough. When he heard her stand he weakly tried to fight off images of the potentially disastrous reactions she could have, telling the family being the worst so far.  
  
"Considering how much he can change in one day, it's unlikely that he'll give you more than that, if that." Washu's even, and almost relaxed voice interrupted Tenchi's decline like a roadblock. He looked up, watching her rise to pace behind the chair.  
  
"But what should-"  
  
"Listen to me Tenchi, if he really does become stronger by---by driving people out of their minds, then something like this could be the end of all of us"  
  
Tenchi watched her separation from her subject in horror and awe.  
  
"However, one thing I am quite sure of," she clenched her arms professionally, "no matter what else he may be, he ^is^ insane."  
  
A spark of her hatred ignited enough of Tenchi emotions to burn each other out, but he ignored the heat easily as she continued.  
  
"Most importantly, this means that he is more likely to make mistakes."  
  
She stopped pacing and faced out the window for a moment. A step towards it and she turned around to show Tenchi an authority he couldn't help but compare to the aforementioned unspeakable.  
  
"Tenchi, there might even be a chance that, whether or not his offer his true, that ^he^ believes it is. You don't have to be around long to know that the most narcissistic psychopaths almost always have at least one bout of consuming self-hatred."  
  
It looked like Washu was chewing on her tongue, but Tenchi couldn't be sure anymore than he could stop his own hands from gripping his knees again.  
  
"I'm not sure how he proposes to 'help you', but...I think you should let him try."  
  
For a moment, Tenchi considered pounding out his ears.  
  
*She's serious!  
  
"But how?" He managed to squeeze out.  
  
"This may finally be the time to give him what he wants." Washu set her steps slow and thoughtful toward the door.  
  
It felt impossible to hear past how much more encouraging it might have sounded with some life behind it.  
  
Washu's oblivious whisper probably wasn't, but it emptied Tenchi just the same.  
  
"^Maybe that's why he left room to give Mihoshi and Yosho back to us^?"  
  
She stopped with her hand on the door and spoke clearly again after easing it open.  
  
"As a peace offering."  
  
*Wait!  
  
A scream too loud to emerge from his throat must have echoed across the stars. Washu stopped and turned to face him. Her expression and tone offered no comfort but the lighter side of chance.  
  
"Tenchi, if he really is trying to make this more of a fair fight, then you can't afford---^we^ can't afford to decline."  
  
Never the passive type, but never the same, Washu left Tenchi alone to accept, through the distance it had to travel, a new idea to hold and carry him.  
  
Even if she'd been an illusion, she'd been right enough.  
  
***  
  
Always the Death's Head.  
  
Always the Body of Life.  
  
So they thought and thus they were. Two sisters remembered enough to be considered everything, and remembered more still. Missing their center just as they had always missed each other from the sides, but rarely braving the chance to rejoin or separate further.  
  
Thus, a mutual gesture should have rung out through their expansive territories like a clashing of glamour-iron spheres. There should have been great inverting side-sentience, cart wheeling off in all directions. Everything should have noticed, but if anything did, it had enough respect to doubt. Surely the two parties concerned knew the time and space to share.  
  
How else as just as before: naturally. Communication is inevitable, even between estranged family members who, in knowing too much, are often uncertainly delayed.  
  
*I'm glad you've chosen to speak, sister.  
  
*I know you share the choice---sister.  
  
*I would that you begin.  
  
*Yes, you would.  
  
...  
  
*Very well. I assume you want an apology.  
  
*I should not want, just as you should not assume.  
  
*And neither of us should waste...so let us agree again not to compete.  
  
*Yes.  
  
*---Our common enemy is still more important  
  
*Yes.  
  
*He could still consume us.  
  
*Yes.  
  
*But he is still affected by us.  
  
*Only on our existence, no longer on our actions.  
  
*---Yes.  
  
*Yet, I have already done more than I should.  
  
*Do not regret.  
  
*Yes.  
  
*---Still, you knew, didn't you?  
  
...  
  
*Do not waste our time, sister.  
  
*Yes, I knew...I knew, but I did not understand.  
  
*Then, do you now?  
  
*I know that he is experiencing great fear and pain.  
  
*Good.  
  
*Inevitable perhaps, but never certain.  
  
*Would you hear my proposal then?  
  
*Of course.  
  
*He craves power, but power can only come from action. We must do  
nothing more, and even less while he is now in doubt.  
  
*You can still impress me, sister.  
  
*Of course.  
  
*It is decided then, we will mutually ignore our shared enemy.  
  
*Agreed.  
  
*...  
  
*Sister?  
  
*Yes?  
  
*I sent him to you, do you oppose me now?  
  
*I cannot.  
  
...  
  
*I nearly allowed him to us, do you oppose me still?  
  
I must.  
  
***  
  
Washu's footsteps sounded light even in the complete silence, and Tenchi wondered if she had not reverted back to her younger form after leaving him. He looked back down at his pillow and remembered the rattle in her pocket, making a crooked frown for a bad joke.  
  
*Maybe I should have taken her up on her offer.  
  
Back in bed, with his arms adding to the pillow, he bounced the half thought off the ceiling till it came back in a full memory.  
  
*I wonder how'd I'd see him if I used Ryoko's tactic.  
  
A few of his few sake memories warmed his throat till optimistic nostalgia froze and grated against a lump. For all she'd done not to look at him it was no easier not to picture her.  
  
*Ryoko.  
  
*If Washu's right---there won't be anything left of him.  
  
The creeping vision trembled heavy under the weight of such buried yellow and such thick red.  
  
*No.  
  
He finally managed to pull a copper shroud over so much once feral, now fevered gold, but forgot to anticipate echoes of submitting accusations. Pinching his sinus helped to fight down the remaining sensations of her, her violence.  
  
*I guess I've gotten pretty good at not thinking about the girls--- for their sakes.  
  
If the victory was empty at least it was considerate; he remembered Washu not wanting to laugh or to forget how. She'd always been good at the impossible, but that was her and he was himself, turning on his side and unconsciously curling into himself. His room looked the same around the chair, still the same as he pushed the chair around.  
  
Only the back moved, the support rotating then trading with the adjustments. In front of his chest rather than his face, his room looked the same around the chair, still the same as he reached out to do precious nothing with it again, still the same as the room changed.  
  
A white marble floating in the center or a pinprick on his eye, he shivered under his blankets for it and went dizzy behind his eyelids. Waiting for it to get worse made it no better, how could facing it be any worse?  
  
If the portal had remained unchanged---what, Tenchi glared, could be keeping him, keeping his tunnel a keyhole?  
  
The point of emptiness mocked him from the center of his room, threatening to change nothing. He hauled up hours of bokken blisters, binding book weeks, and moments of peace wrought out of his last moments. His triumphs would give him strength if he would only take them. No ordinary earth boy blinked slow and breathed deep one last time before fighting back the giving up leaking from this hole in his world.  
  
Unchanged, the portal accepted his challenge, lingering little but impossible, then fantastic, and at last possible to resist.  
  
Like the first sign of color through a whitening stain, he held fast to it. The disorientation had leveled and was still lower under this first strike of his will.  
  
Time forgotten soon after being discarded, Tenchi fought back till he'd uncurled then sat up on his bed. The captured ground was stronger beneath him, and he could afford to lean forward and scowl back at the white.  
  
*I'm doing it!  
  
He could not, but would believe that he was standing up, then not even supporting himself on the chair.  
  
*I'm resisting!  
  
His fists weren't shaking yet, so he clenched them tighter, stronger. His first step toward the intruder's first offering replaced the will he'd spent just to face it. Now he could not, but he would believe that he was taking steps to starring down this emptying eye.  
  
*I will not fear.  
  
His body felt carved upon the next step.  
  
*I will not doubt.  
  
Sealed upon the next.  
  
*I can beat this.  
  
Lighter.  
  
*Show yourself, I'm ready.  
  
Lighter.  
  
*Show me.  
  
Tenchi reached out to it, and tried to bring the hand into focus, and failed. Still he could see how lose his fingers were, then he could feel the droop in his jaw.  
  
*Tell me. How can it be?  
  
Effortless upon the next step.  
  
*I have to know---I have to know everything.  
  
His fingers loosened even more to be just a little closer.  
  
*I have to hold it.  
  
Compelled, helpless on the next step.  
  
*I---can't stop.  
  
The air was gentle and easy around his body as it moved without him.  
  
*No.  
  
The air dried his quivering lips and wet his cheek with a tear.  
  
*It's too late.  
  
He remembered the traveling moments, but couldn't imagine what it would feel like when the next step touched him to the path.  
  
The softly surrounding terror devoured him and spat him out in a rush, a flashing dilation. Tenchi's hand came into focus as it trembled before Seita's chest.  
  
Looking up, like remaining vertical, like remaining conscious, was mixed-blessedly automatic.  
  
Vivid blues lined in clever black reached out from the melting hallow of perfectly unnatural blonde. Hail gentle seduction, prepare to strangle in its lesson.  
  
"Fear and fascination---will surrender their bodies-"  
  
Tenchi lowered his hand and Seita raised both of his.  
  
"Only to see eye to eye."  
  
Wine tipped fingers were soft and graceful up his neck, around his jaw and cheeks. Tenchi locked eyes, small and threatened and awed by so much gorgeous malice.  
  
"And eye to eye."  
  
Seita's little daggers taunted down the back of his neck. Tenchi fought the stare, terrified and hating so much vanity quickly melting into so much misery.  
  
"And eye to eye."  
  
Lifting at their leisure, both hands folded behind him to tilt his head forward. The oblivion portals crushed into threatening eyes, crushing heaven and earth.  
  
Tenchi remembered The Ghost of Madness, shying back from cruel megalomania, retreating from the invulnerable unspeakable with every speaking step it took toward him.  
  
"The sparks of consciousness that strike up and out of instinct have yet to offer anything but questions," Seita wetted the dying elegance in his throat with a dainty swallow, "and centering moments that offer not but a will to dull the universe with their brilliance."  
  
Another step forward and back, Tenchi began to waver before the oracle statue.  
  
"Anything but questions, and spreading moments that have yet to donate more than 'believing'...believing they only answer what is asked of them."  
  
The chair rolled a little as he backed into it and he let himself sink without a thought, teeth clattering, clenching bitter, grinding petty between being shorter still and not giving the guest a place to sit.  
  
Seita closed his eyes, filling himself, as he would, with a breath too deep for his frame. The hairs on Tenchi's body all tried to leap out during the smooth exhale, but he would not grip his arms, would not clench his fists, would not waste what little he had on anything beyond meeting those eyes when they returned.  
  
And they returned victorious with a voice to prove it, confirming at last that apathy truly could make confidence obsolete.  
  
"I am sick-from, and tired-of questions, Tenchi. But before I hear your judgment I have one more explanation." Head pulled back, half-grin smug up, shoulders balancing a clever angle, and everything was a dandy perfect regression to Seita's dandy perfect self.  
  
"That is...if you want to hear it."  
  
Blinking the last specks of detachment, Tenchi turned in his chair and nonchalantly reached the sword out from under his pillow. Acceptance examined it with limply weighing hands, small under the torrent of memories all inspiring more vengeance than he could ignore or approach. He retraced, felt his chest ready to collapse before it breached the first layer of the peaceful moment before something beyond him stepped in to save him.  
  
*...for the second time.  
  
"^Yes^."  
  
Tenchi could barely feel the vibration, but never doubted that Seita could. Lifting his head was impossible, but explanations would not begin without an audience. Realization almost smiled in him then as he looked up and recognized his sixth guest's first disguise. Thus recognition of the unaffected voice almost softened him, almost convinced him that the eyes had changed to match.  
  
"I am surrendering now because I was never in the war. If I have made any permanent impressions---I have made them on impermanent surfaces."  
  
The old demon's last hiss wanted nothing more than to be alive for its end. Standing tallest, Seita turned perpendicular to his canvas to let the paint dry.  
  
Feeling himself lose color, Tenchi only looked back down at the sword, at Jurai, at the gems.  
  
"Do you need anything else to make your decision?"  
  
The hilt felt real and sturdy, if useless as he closed his hand and eyes around it. He hoped his own voice would sound as unencumbered as he hoped it would exorcise selfishness.  
  
"No one wants to ask Sasami what happened that night."  
  
He waited for the pitiful and vengeful pangs to call him out as naive to the last, but they only exhausted themselves. Nothing left but whimpers for comfort.  
  
Nothingness responded with a whisper of doubt, defiantly taking a bitter taste of its own medicine.  
  
"Facades have always drawn me, Tenchi, but I never cared much for telling lies. If you need a third vote of confidence; may you do with it what you will."  
  
Tenchi looked up at the profile and looked for the hole in his nemesis's unstoppable yet now uninspired shroud.  
  
Eyes folded and breath hushed, Seita didn't need to check his audience's attention.  
  
"Tsunami...showed me something. Clear and transient as life and water; I was achieving, embodying my glory."  
  
Seita threw his eyes open like deadly rotting claws.  
  
"But I had exhausted my perception, and turned from oblivion's banner--- into oblivion's mace."  
  
Silent, still, and ever the time-slow-killer; Tenchi waited then readied then tensed again twice over.  
  
"If it does not end here," one graceful hand gestured down at the floor.  
  
"Then it will end here," Seita held a temptation plate up to the window, a saucer-sized oblivion portal rotating in all directions above it.  
  
Tenchi tilted the sword, watching moonlight swirl typhoons of fear and pity in the gems. Unhurried and unencumbered, he turned slow to lay the sword on his pillow, and turned back slower to rise from the chair. Still perpendicular, but with even postures, calmed spite gave spiteful surrender an audience.  
  
"What do I have to do?" 


	5. Verse Ten is Sacrifice

Standard Disclaimer:  
  
I thank all the owners of the Tenchi characters who have chosen not to sue me for suggesting some alternative uses for them.  
  
Standard Advertisement:  
  
I thank all the readers who have perused my other submissions and favorite authors.  
  
Standard Procedure:  
  
Dispose of hazardous materials in a safe and proper manner.  
  
Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum  
  
-Verse Ten is Sacrifice-  
  
-Part 1-  
  
Thus it speaks of shape in forming---inverting ripe old doubt.  
  
Made in vain and its own image---once blessed and twice cast out.  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
Distraction had to be meditation. The profile said nothing about hesitation, yet, after twenty seconds stretched eternity twice, Seita remained unmoved by Tenchi's acceptance. There wasn't much consideration for being simply misheard and not much more for being taken off guard. Surely the volunteer's parts had been assembled long before the recruitment strategy. It would be almost absurd now, Tenchi thought, to allow any more doubt on the scene.  
  
"Well?" Gruff impatience, well-self-imposed, dulled his fear for a moment. Seita reassured almost indifferently almost before the end of the prompt.  
  
"You do not 'have' to do anything."  
  
"Th-Then what-" Tenchi blinked down a quick gulp.  
  
"Simply use your perception, I do hope it happens naturally enough by now."  
  
It should have sounded like sarcasm or cold wit, but the tone vibrated too informally as Seita turned and gestured on the same note.  
  
"Lie down and try to relax."  
  
Tenchi managed a disbelieving glance at his bed. He was right, more doubt was here and it was quite absurd. Hopefully his responding glare would show this.  
  
The half grin, in the whole memory of Seita's cleverness, caught the message.  
  
"Or stand and try to relax."  
  
Not moving, and barely meeting him halfway, Tenchi let himself breath.  
  
"There," Seita's smile crawled evenly all up both sides of his face, "you don't 'have' to trust me, Tenchi."  
  
For a moment it seemed that he was extending his hand like a western custom, though too high and delicate. At a downward second glance, however, Tenchi recognized it as something similar. He'd seen children secure a secret or oath with a friend by locking their little fingers together.  
  
"But trust me."  
  
Looking back into the consuming blue, Tenchi could still see the long nail of the shortest finger curling out, ready to hook his own.  
  
"I---promise." A hiss and a chuckle squirmed into Seita's whisper almost unnoticed.  
  
The roots of Tenchi's nerves rotted black to absorb the very ether of it. Oblivion's voice echoed, danced, and mutated till it mocked this same mistake twice. All the while all the world's shivers doubled gleeful mania. It all climaxed too subtly on Seita's image and essence.  
  
The extended palm began to turn up while the other rose to balance it. Submission relaxed into each finger then prepared them, clutched them to catch an acid judgment.  
  
"I---^swear^."  
  
Despairing question after another, all stillborn in Tenchi's mind through the upward growth of Seita's nails, widening and arching back directly into his own palms. Flesh indented then impaled with the crunch of broken glass in a mouthful of gelatin. Curdling milk dripped onto the floor and the nails retracted to normal excess length.  
  
Hands lowering but palms still up, Seita took stepped back into a new and improved posture of apology, salvation, and limbs ready to break under the weight of his smile. Thus, smoothly timed, his forearms rotated the wrong way like a poseable action figure. Realistic bones crushed under clockwork in Tenchi's ears.  
  
Criss-Cross-Over-Lap; two punctures lift up a keyhole. Left eye narrows through it, whole mouth dies beneath it.  
  
"My..." A breath.  
  
Both eyes bow above it, both lips pucker through it.  
  
"...word." A blow.  
  
The bubbles Tenchi used to blow from pink plastic sticks looked so like this, but never so big and bigger, and bigger till one floated up and out, like a white cell ready to take them both for infection. Rainbows melted and swarmed like storm clouds over its amorphous surface and in the dark of his room it reminded him of parking lot oil puddles. By the 'pop' of Seita's lips he would have remembered pink gummy suckers, but the bubble burst.  
  
Rather than a rain of stringy suds, its silent explosion left a single perfect circle puncture. Tenchi was grateful for the single tear that remembered bravery as he looked up, watching the unblinking void all through its guillotine fall.  
  
***  
  
The faithful saw lines between the air seem to tense as their emperor glanced to the far corners and immediate shadows, dismissing guards, advisors, and servants alike. Misaki watched as they moved as promptly as possible without scampering like rodents. Unaffected, Funaho remained diplomatic and keenly focused. The large doors shut behind them, its heavy formality bringing Azusa to a slow attention. He glanced down at them both in their entirety, though his eyes should not have been physically able. Dignified and resilient to their visibly well-restrained emotion, he lifted up his left sleeve. The hidden control band clung to his forearm smoothly, a blue square glowed to the royal touch. Intended only for a single room, but perfected for ^any^ uninvited eyes or ears, the light spread out from his arm in a steel fog, passing, surrounding and reassuring them all of privacy.  
  
"If we must gather beneath the royal cloak then I take it you know what this is about." Funaho stated plainly as her husband sat back down with eyes closed softly and mouth sealed tight.  
  
"Yes, but I believe we had this discussion once before. I know how you love to re-plan your strategies against me, but there is ^still^ nothing more to be said." Azusa held his temper with a vice.  
  
"There is more my husband, things I feared to tell you." Funaho fought dirty, smearing the grounds between love and country. She held the stare, waiting for reinforcements.  
  
"Please, we don't want to argue, only to explain." Misaki began to tenderize.  
  
"Explain?" He tightened his face and leaned forward. "What more is there to explain? You've already told me that you feel Tsunami is in distress, I did not argue with this, I felt it too, as did all the high priests and even my older generals. Blast it woman, ^She^ is the ^life^ of ^Jurai^! I'm surprised every Noble in the empire hasn't come moaning to me with some story or another of their 'special empathy' with The Tree."  
  
His queens stared back into the maw of his rising anger, trying to give back some of the patience he was giving up.  
  
"I did not tell you about the direction of my dream." Funaho's voice washed over the emperor in an icy sad coo.  
  
"Your dream?" Azusa stiffened.  
  
"The dream that I shared." Misaki added in a similar tone, though progressively less humble. She straightened her jaw, ready to capitalize on the color draining from her husband's face.  
  
"What are you talking about? You told me that the dreams were vague."  
  
"They were." Funaho stated almost coldly. "But they soon began to take shape, this is not merely one of the fluxes in energy we feel when Her trees root on other planets, this is a---a distress." She hesitated at emotions rising too soon, but feared stopping to calm them.  
  
Azusa pulled his head back, following Funaho's gaze to Misaki.  
  
"This is more like what we felt shortly before going to see my daughters on Earth. The Goddess is still distant, but these dreams, they all carry the same-" Misaki lost herself, bowing her head in either compromise or strategy. Funaho picked up for her.  
  
"^Fear^."  
  
"Fear?" Azusa echoed dumbly. Guarding himself with a more violent expression as he recalled the day, the day shortly before the GP report, before his great grandson.  
  
"She is in confrontation with something," Funaho continued, taking a side step to squeeze her sister's hand, "something more horrible than the pirate Kagato ever could have been."  
  
Azusa darkened again, lowering his head and clutching thought into the armrests of his chair. His second wife finally continued with slightly more conviction.  
  
"We have seen the same thing; Tsunami, She faces something so---so terribly ^empty^. I fear someone may have found a power to-"  
  
"Enough!" Azusa lifted his head with a thundering decree, not needing to reassure himself that his wives were taken aback.  
  
"^This^ is why I keep our son's whereabouts unknown! This is why I take great measures to keep the kingdom under control! It is not the place of dreams, whether shared by two or a million, to dictate the course of our empire. There cannot be sentiment and crusading emotions when regarding our highest power. I will not let Jurai fall into spiritual conflict, or any other kind of idealistic chaos."  
  
The emperor rose and brought down the heavens with him as he approached his queens. He glared down, past anger and through the water, stone and stars of a ruler's love.  
  
"You are both reasonable women. You are the queens of galaxy upon galaxy, and I do not doubt that Tsunami is with you, always. But so long as I am emperor and so long as her power flows, you must learn to trust both." Standing close and still over his wives, he softened slightly with each word.  
  
"I will that we not speak of this any longer, the trees were here long before us, and they ask to be loved, not sheltered."  
  
"But-" Funaho tried, but tried pitifully, already hanging her head alongside her sister's in captured humility.  
  
"Shhh. Rest now my loves, I do not belittle your concern, but I do not share it. Tsunami is all, and if she were to be afraid we would only show her ever more faith."  
  
Azusa spread his arms wide and brought his wives into his chest, each returning the embrace with heads still down. Their eyes never flinched as they waited for comfort to sooth the uncertainty of their submission. The emperor's voice was very final, and reassuring enough.  
  
"Come, let us visit The Tree, we could all do with a deep prayer."  
  
***  
  
Raw and ready enough for his mind to drown or implode, then still standing on something solid and level. Only able to see his body amid nothing, Tenchi tried to consol himself that the emptiness was black instead of white.  
  
"Hello?" His voice was clear, but felt like an inverse of the ratio between what he heard with his ears and what he heard in his head. "Seita?"  
  
Tenchi turned around and was about to try again when he blinked into a grassy field. Sun nearly out-shined the clean blue sky. Insects sang to the dance of wild scents. Ever since he was a boy he'd loved the field below the shrine and it was just as real now and almost as beautiful with Seita's back a short distance before him. The blonde was perfect and motionless amid the unnatural lack of breeze.  
  
"Don't worry, this is only a lobby of sorts."  
  
Again the ratio was off. Yet Tenchi still noticed more the disenchanted insecurity crawling beneath Seita's doll skin voice.  
  
"It seemed fitting to run you through a placebo gauntlet beforehand. If I can't lure some trust for myself I can at least scare some honesty into you."  
  
Honestly frightened made sure his fists still worked.  
  
"Hidden knowledge ^should^ be frightening, Tenchi, especially when someone else is trying to pay price for it."  
  
Professional charm waited a balance between the right moment to turn and the moment when Tenchi approached. The former advanced its formal advantage and Seita's hair still didn't move.  
  
"The field, however, is intended to put you at ease. Your body is quite motionless now, the body and everything else you feel here is a projection to keep this experience from being too disorienting."  
  
Seita walked toward and past him to the lake, enjoying the scenery as much as an empty hallway. Tenchi blinked, and bent to pinch a blade of grass with uncertain then restrained awe. He breathed and kept pace a meter behind his guide.  
  
"So how far are you now, inside my mind that is?" A little more natural now, but Tenchi still sounded unnerved by the sudden absence of weariness and all other physical discomforts.  
  
"^I^ am not inside, this procedure requires that I invite you into ^my^ consciousness."  
  
Tenchi held his arms and retracted his neck into his shoulders, trying not to give an inch to the falling levels in Seita's voice.  
  
"And in case you were wondering; when I said 'too disorienting' I was referencing the time I tried to do something similar to this for Kagato."  
  
The grass and earth grunted beneath Tenchi's abrupt stop. Seita continued walking.  
  
"Ironically it was his idea to even try it after he realized how directly connected my abilities were to psychic influence. Entering and spying on the consciousness of another naturally interested him, but at the time it was very difficult and too disorienting."  
  
Seita stopped at the lake's edge and continued speaking at a consistently audible tone as Tenchi caught up.  
  
"He eventually gathered the courage to try some lesser mass infusions on himself, and learned how to do this a bit, though only with the unconscious. The perceptions of those asleep are easier, 'safer' to experiment with; supple as wet clay, almost too soft in fact."  
  
With heavy and reluctant steps, Tenchi came up to the final meter behind Seita's left shoulder.  
  
"Have you done this with anyone else since then?" He was certain he'd asked it too timidly and was almost certain the words had actually escaped his mouth.  
  
"No."  
  
"No?"  
  
"No, but I have had reasonable experience with the general context, decision anxiety that is."  
  
The train of words detached themselves quick and cold.  
  
Whatever stout perception blocker had been keeping two and two apart, Tenchi was now paralyzed and certain of which decision Seita was referencing. It would rend him whether he tried to clarify or not.  
  
"De---cision, what decision?"  
  
Seita bowed his head slightly, isolated, and incinerated sentiment.  
  
"If there is a more pressing debate for you, by all means we'll address it, but I've seen the way you look at them, and I've seen the way they look at you. There is a cancer of uncertainty growing between the three of you, fed each day by different sides of similar emotions."  
  
A breath lifted his shoulders a bit and lifted his head less.  
  
"I plan to move your sleeping suitors into a state of border-lucidity; they will know they are dreaming but they will react to the dream environment just as they would to their perception of reality. They will each be given similar visions. You will simply have to pay attention to their reactions."  
  
The waves converged as they always had and always wanted too, completely crushing him, dividing his limbs till what was left prepared itself for a final collapse. He was never ready, would never be ready to final-face this. Whatever it took, he had to lift his eyes from the imaginary ground that would collect his gave-up remains, had to take back the permission Seita was about to germinate.  
  
When he looked up it was though wind-blown strands of gold and at the dock, empty and waiting for an image of himself to take the first step. Longer legs positioned the guide behind his customer in three steps. No softer a machine presented the only way to know like the only way to travel.  
  
"This will show the woman who will love you. This will show the woman who you will love."  
  
"What...what's the difference?"  
  
Tenchi smothered his eyes and strangled his jaw at the question's absent- minded escape, ready to take his life to take it back. How he could make this trial even harder was even beyond how Seita's could still more than mock him with a quiet, almost private chuckle, though more personal than an inside joke. The grass and sand shifted as another long step back placed Tenchi all but alone to un-blink his eyes halfway up the dock facing Ryoko's back.  
  
"Ryoko."  
  
Tenchi heard his voice speak out to her, clear and friendly, but from about half a meter behind him. Ryoko and he both clenched and turned to see Tenchi, dressing casually and looking half-ready to deliver some formal news. He moved out of the way reflexively as the image of himself made its way up the dock. Clearly she couldn't see the 'real' Tenchi standing dumbfounded in his sleep clothes. Undoubtedly this was for the best.  
  
"Well hi-ya Tenchi, imagine seeing you here." Ryoko responded sarcastically, but still floated towards him, resting her hands on his shoulders with solemn longing.  
  
"I wonder what I'll do with you this time." Though not as playful as Tenchi would have expected, when she rested her head against the image of him she smiled more brightly than he'd seen since so many colored lights.  
  
"Ryoko, I need to talk to you."  
  
The dream of Tenchi spoke seriously, taking her hands away and locking eyes. Her expression changed instantly, sinking past soft.  
  
"Please Ryoko, I---I want you to understand that I'll always care about you, and that I'll always be your friend." The image's voice drained the color from her face with a thickening tone of sympathy.  
  
It was the weight again, the monstrous boulder rolling over his chest, ready to grind in what both he and the dreaming Ryoko seemed anticipate. Here it came, Tenchi lost track of what was going numb first while he wished for deafness.  
  
"Aeka and I are going to be married, I---I just hope that we can have your blessing."  
  
Tenchi had always imagined he would sound terrified if faced with a moment like this, thus the bravery the image spoke with washed over his mind with surreal clarity, leaving the perfect canvas for Seita's calligraphy.  
  
"Now pay closest attention, Tenchi. Ryoko will try to respond to this dream in accordance with how she has imagined she would in reality. I'm sure she's done this on her own numerous times."  
  
Tenchi readied himself to absorb screams for blood and fire. He wanted to slap his dream self into offering some better imitation of comfort, wanted to hold Ryoko one last time and tell her---something-anything-what.  
  
His lingering indecision would have to wait; it was not entirely unlike facing Seita's oblivion, a shocking perception-invasion, but still he felt more like an overwhelmed observer than a manipulated subject. Ryoko's reaction struck and stripped him, existence swallowed into her mind and spit back into his.  
  
Tenchi knew as well as Ryoko did: for that moment, for their future. The chronology raced, pushing him through a sieve and pulling him back at once. He experienced how she'd imagine his body would feel when she embraced him, possibly for the last real time. And more real than his own imagination, in came her hope for one true kiss, even if in mercy. His head throbbed with the onsen waters and a belly full of forced-celebratory sake. Every strand and fiber of her will stretched in determination; she would not break, she would not fray.  
  
It was watching a film far too close to the screen, watching herself through her eyes. New scenarios and reactions bombarded him, she forced him along with her into her perception of nobility, of grace and friendship. Tenchi saw himself lifting Aeka's veil at the apex of a grand wedding ceremony, saw Ryoko forcing cheers out from a stone river face. She hugged the rest of the family and they hugged her back better than sympathy. There was the sake feeling again, but this time it was reflected by Aeka's rosy cheeks as they shared a private toast, then another, and another.  
  
All the world a slow swallow into bitter jealousy, then spat up onto his shoulders. This would crush everything but for the real terror; the inhuman strength pummeling it into respect. He was Ryoko as she watched herself scald blurred eyes to watch over him, committing a new life to protecting something better than she probably ever could have loved it. The sentiment repeated till it was stronger than cliché and better than real, that his happiness was more important than any chance of theirs. It comforted her enough to imagine eventually smiling a soft sigh whenever she looked at him, holding Aeka unconditionally.  
  
The maybe lucky prince only hoped his real body was doing a better job at breathing. By the intimidating clarity of Ryoko's senses, he experienced the field anew, rich sunsets and autumn tastes. She was standing, sharing smiles with the proud parents before they all combined them down on a toddling treasure. Having mixed light brown hair with pink eyes the best she could, the rest of her imagination dedicated itself to the inclusion she would feel, would have to-have to feel.  
  
The desperate dreamer and reluctant spy trembled together, holding the child conceived between the one love and greatest rival, and being accepted by both. Those entirely new tears would caress just this way as he heard himself and Aeka bestow the title of "Auntie Ryoko" with genuine trusting affection.  
  
Skin tingled deeper than his bones and raced Tenchi's heartbeat to a near finish as he was dropped back in his own now comparatively mundane 'body'. Comparison almost bought and worshiped the 'lobby'. Even without any wind again the grass was real and the earth was hard as he wavered down to his knees. He tried not to hear every single footstep marching smug between his exhaustion.  
  
Tenchi could see the expression cast down on him through the sound of Seita's voice. The guest was looking at his host the way he might look at his own hand as it lost all its wonder, respect, then sympathy, till the nothingness of it entranced him in a new god's limbo.  
  
"Those are her ideals, Tenchi, ^her^ vision of how she would like to react.  
  
Not wanting to think past the simple return of Seita's overt presence, Tenchi looked at his own hand after it finished pinching his eyes.  
  
"I...I shouldn't have-"  
  
The stale exoskeleton of a singular throaty chuckle made the rasped whisper seem smaller.  
  
"Invaded her?"  
  
Another step closer.  
  
"Or subjected yourself?"  
  
Knowing he should stand before trying to look at the guide again, Tenchi kept his eyes closed through the difficult journey back to his own two feet. Still, not entirely ready, he opened up again just below where he imagined the draining blue would be.  
  
Seita had noiselessly turned his back already, speaking as sterile as a clean execution.  
  
"Regardless to either, it's too late to stop now."  
  
Tenchi found himself following the same though unbeaten path back to the dock and himself, now the one standing at the end of it. He tried not to blink for as long as he could. Of course he couldn't, and still didn't have time to prepare as the princess remained as prompt on her cues as ever.  
  
"Lord Tenchi, there you are."  
  
The princess was walking up the dock as he turned to look at her, a modest smile and a huge blush spread as she nearly walked through his otherwise weak colors. Tenchi blinked and shook his head a bit harder this time.  
  
"You weren't hiding from me, were you?"  
  
It was slightly unusual for Aeka to tease what might as well have been him, but he quickly remembered that she believed this was only a vision. Surely she would try to direct this into a favorable dream just as Ryoko had.  
  
"Aeka, I-" Tenchi held his hands out in the beginning of an apology, but lowered his eyes helplessly by the time she was close enough to touch.  
  
"Lord Tenchi?"  
  
From the reversed angle, Tenchi heard the fall of a kimono sleeve and had to imagine Aeka's expression as she stopped her approach and to hide her mouth behind her hand. From the previous encounter he could guess well enough, but wondered why Seita hadn't made the princess more visible. A blink answered his question and made him look over his own shoulder again.  
  
"Miss Aeka, I have to tell you something."  
  
"Tell me something? Why, wh-wh-whatever would you have to tell me?" Fear stuttered blatantly into passive hopefulness. Even when partly aware, she seemed to treat the dream far less like a practice run.  
  
"I---I love Ryoko. I know I've taken a while to realize it, but it's true. We're planning to marry."  
  
Tenchi imagined the same sympathy in his voice matching his expression as he watched Aeka's head tilt and shoulders slouch till they almost pointed downward. He thought he could see those delicate hands trembling beneath her sleeves.  
  
"I'm sorry, I never wanted to hurt any of you, but---but I can't change the way I feel."  
  
Cursing himself twice over this time for not sounding out more comfort, Tenchi forced a deep breath. Surely he wouldn't be able to take another during whatever Aeka had in store for them both. Yet, the princess continued to stand there in silence, merely trembling a little more visibly. The image of Tenchi took a step forward with concern, while the viewing Tenchi looked instinctively to where he thought Seita might be standing. No sign and no time to search further.  
  
"No." A suppressed sob fell at their feet in a soft crumpled mass.  
  
"Aeka," the image softened even more, closing the distance to offer a consoling embrace.  
  
"NOOO!"  
  
The dock and their universe disappeared in wake of shrill violence. Tenchi again found himself praying for the organs still standing in his room as a flash of darkness turned into a sea of stars. Conceivable emptiness was lacerated as Ryo-oh raged toward him. Moments before collision his angle changed, and he was with Aeka, watching herself inside the ship.  
  
Digging his hands through his hands and into his skull felt like nothing. He feared how he would look to Washu, to Seita, again petrified and helpless, but even this misery lasted a flash or less. Aeka's emotions stuck him and dragged him as entirely uncontrollable. Agony watched the princess, gentle and dignified First Princess of Jurai, kneeling before the imagined Tenchi. Pitiful sobs begged them both into the lowest parts.  
  
"Please, ^please^ Tenchi, you don't understand. I ^know^ this isn't what you really want!"  
  
She wavered, barely able to stay on her knees.  
  
"You must think it would be too difficult to love me, but---but I love you too much to give up now!"  
  
Tenchi couldn't blink, or look past the only moderately distraught face his image, for fear of seeing the blood she was pouring onto its feet. The scene convinced him first and foremost that passion existed. An abandoned princess's love knew no limits. Eternity could shrivel up before she would yield her heart. Life would not remember its existence till he knew the extent of her adoration. Every regretted restraint, every suppressed desire, they all screamed out to him for justice. Enveloped in her acid writhe, he knew absolute and inescapable loneliness they way he would when it became everything.  
  
*Seita! Please! Stop it!  
  
Not really believing that the guide would stop, the vision's pain cooled but twisted further as the tour did slow. An ice shower swept over a wasteland of exposed magma, crystallizing Tenchi's emotions into the growth of some grandiose immortality. The vision of himself lifted Aeka from his feet and cried apologies into her hair, wrapping them both up in a glow that swarmed up and out of Ryo-oh. An immense display of intricate carvings and glorious lights rooted through everything. There was no question, no room for doubt, no matter what. For Aeka, or anyone sharing even a piece of her mind, their love would eventually blossom into a new star of pure beauty and unsurpassed bliss.  
  
Like a pre-time reflex, however, a flash of royal practicality showed the plans for any alternative.  
  
Her prince faded from Ryo-oh, and Tenchi's perspective was launched outside once again, this time among an enormous fleet of Jurian war crafts. He watched in horror as they all unleashed their cannons on a single figure, clawing, clutching at empty space like a hellish tumor, and eventually disintegrating from wild spikes into withered specks, into nothing.  
  
Back in what looked like the shrine's forest an unflinching rage swallowed Aeka and ground Tenchi in its teeth. He could feel his grandfather's sword in her hands as she lifted Ryoko off her feet, skewered and screaming on the end of the blue blade, and plunged her like a hammer into the ground. Huge roots grew around and concealed her, and not till an enormous tree had buried her completely did Aeka pull back with a muted cry of victory tearing her eyes wide to the heavens.  
  
And through the hatred came the helplessness, the destructive side wavering under it's own weight till the scene changed again. Black again. Aeka's trembling hands reached then held out to the Jurian prince's dissipating smile. The far reaches wreaked havoc, her mind's eyes rolling vile, the will towards all things held sacred merely wilted, waiting to be coughed away.  
  
Those tales of noble deaths where a whisper Tenchi wanted to believe was Seita's, wanted more and more as they burned into all that remained in Aeka's self. Her life would only be a burden without at least the possibility of grasping his heart.  
  
The emerging tree was clearly Jurian by the time it was half grown from the dead space where Aeka had unknowingly placed Tenchi with herself. Again he wanted to believe an oblivion portal had been placed above them, around them, orbiting their cores. The hollowing torture spread up from her hands as they tied the rope to the tree, to itself. Leaves fell across the vision, clearing dust off a picture of Tenchi in Ryoko's arms.  
  
Cry out her name, pick her up in your arms and promise that she will never have to consider such a thing. And he tried and he tried and he couldn't. By the barbed throat turned in on itself by iron forceps; now swirled a bloodied flame over her drained eyes. He couldn't turn away as she climbed a pedestal of growing stone. Throwing hope again at the real body to still be alive still after this, what ^had^ to be The Ghost of Madness and its parting gift; that he'd have to see the whole thing. Amid a cloud of desolate whispers, pleas for un-reality and forgiveness, Aeka lifted one foot and stepped forward, blinking her prince back into his room.  
  
---  
  
Tenchi's eyes sprung open and clenched in pain at the intensity of real though still very little light. His breaths exploded so heavy that he felt the sweat beads being thrown off. The new knowledge, agony to call it so, vibrated through his consciousness in waves of pitiful whimpers and terrifying screams. He recoiled to be somehow holding the ignited sword and quickly extinguished it, dropping the hilt on the bed and taking proper time to clutch the fullest low moan from his entire hear. Time was forgotten easily through shiver, after clench, after gulp of no idea who or whether to thank that it was over. The intensity receded in time to notice distant birdsong and the newborn gray of pre-dawn.  
  
Testing his feet, he carefully made his way to the window and stared at curtains he rarely ever pulled closed. The house quiet still, and himself still alone. Exhaustion was bleeding away the last of his emergency adrenaline, nothing but wavering eyelids and sallow hands. He wanted to smile again that he could feel the tears at all. Each of the two waves were frozen mountains now, his mirror and theirs ready and waiting in lava beneath the obsidian and avalanche beneath the ice. Yet again he wanted to smile now that the decision had impaled him from all sides; he should be enjoying this numbed shock for as long as possible. Some reflex mutated a yawn and trembled his jaw, drawing out his voice without thinking, for real. It sounded weak and felt like nothing.  
  
"^I'm sorry^."  
  
For the first time the oblivion portal seemed to make a sound, opening like a hole in his ceiling with the distant and muffled echo of an old man's gasp for breath. All the usual reactions switched on, the disorientation, the cold too intense to affect his skin, and of course, the now unmistakable hollowing rush. It lasted impossibly shorter, however, than the usual shards of seconds, almost just another easily forgotten moment in the face of history.  
  
Seita fell. The distance from the ceiling to the floor was hardly more than his height. No flailing or outstretched limbs; he clung to himself in a fetal ball and landed on his side. What should have been only a grand thud was decorated with a sharp slap as his body was covered with enough liquid to start a puddle beneath him. Tenchi felt a few drops of a foul moisture land on his feet and shins. He didn't pay half a moment's notice before pulling more adrenaline from the sight of what used to be his sixth guest.  
  
The once lean man was now nearly emaciated. Dull white short sleeves and loose pants clung to him like wet paper over dry sticks. Bare hands and feet were raw-red and the shaven stubble on his skull grew rougher as it spread down his face and neck. Over the under-aged soldier calling 'mother' into his freshly exposed organs, by the side of a newly hatched bird's last struggle beneath a swarm of ants, interwoven with drooling bile over the last laugh; someone similar lifted head, eyes, and smile to cover the host's. His un-enhanced voice, mortal, clinging spitefully to consciousness, washed over the rest.  
  
"It may hurt ^them^, Tenchi---"  
  
A cough kicked at his ribs, wrenching his eyes shut and imploding his body further fetal. Trembling open again after a few seconds, he widened the smile, stretched and split it into an explosion of teeth, pushed mucus out through them. A sickly wheeze chewed sinister velvet into rotting leather paste.  
  
"But I'm glad it helped ^you^."  
  
Clenched limbs relaxed enough for his pale head to droop and drum the floor.  
  
Dregs of adrenaline fermented behind Tenchi's eyes, scrawling down his throat and coating his palms. The air remained foul, but he became glad for not needing to check a pulse as he watched Seita's frame rise and fall.  
  
***  
  
Tenchi Muyo: Sanctuary and Asylum  
  
-Verse Ten is Sacrifice-  
  
-Part 2-  
  
Thus truth will void all barriers---restrictive and defensive.  
  
But save us our salvation. Bless the faithful---spare the pensive.  
  
Just an eon's space of justified---for each and any time it saves.  
  
Hope they leave their immortal moment---taking explanations to their graves.  
  
-ZJS  
  
***  
  
Soft blue, over white and into pink, staring focused, staying still. Such a dainty hand for hesitation guarded nose-close, licked lips, swallowed fear. Pinching the printed face, turning it, placing it down, looking up from both ends.  
  
"Your turn."  
  
Sasami wrinkled her nose with a thoughtful hum, daring to hold her own cards with only one hand to give a loose brain a close scratch.  
  
"Boy Mihoshi, you've sure got a good poker-face." The young princess pouted but complimented sincerely.  
  
"Oh gee," her cards tumbled to her lap as she griped both cheeks to keep them from stretching or burning off, "you really think so."  
  
The rising giggles almost made Sasami drop her own cards as she pressed them hard against her lips.  
  
"Oh! Oh dear, don't look-don't look!" Mihoshi scrambled to get her hand back in order before Sasami had them both shuffling. When she looked up the pink spies were well covered by a card fan. A moment later they peeked playfully.  
  
"Maybe we should start over," Sasami suggested through a half- swallowed laugh while the detective tried desperately to re-file her hand.  
  
"Hold on-hold on, I'm---I'm almost ready.  
  
"There---I think."  
  
At the surrendered sigh Sasami swooped down at success. Mihoshi read them and wept.  
  
"Full house!" The beaming princess laughed as much as she could amid her opponent's freely raining cards.  
  
"Some poker face."  
  
"Oh come on, Mihoshi, best three out of four."  
  
"Alright, but this time I shuffle."  
  
Like rain and crickets, the cards made an empty house seem less than mute. Creep up and burn out, the break in their fun let in the uneasy draft, keeping Mihoshi shuffling long past the normal amount, not at all like Zen.  
  
Sasami pulled a pig tale forward and stroked it. She had been doing this a lot recently, though no one noticed, and though she couldn't remember if she'd done it much before. It helped for calm or helped for focus, surely one of the two.  
  
"So, how long did they ask you to baby-sit me?" The princess looked up to catch Mihoshi off guard, half-expecting and maybe wanting the cards to fall again. To her disappointment the shuffling stopped and the new hands were dealt out without so much as a sliver of blue looking up.  
  
When Sasami didn't pick up her cards for nearly a minute after Mihoshi had her own ready, a too-sudden and lighthearted reply beamed out.  
  
"'Baby-sit'?! That's silly. Sasami, since when have I ever had to baby-sit you?"  
  
"Since when have you ever been up and dressed and ready with a breakfast tray and a card game before I even woke up?"  
  
Silent and slow, Mihoshi organized her cards a little bit more tightly.  
  
"I couldn't sleep."  
  
"Yeah but---that's nothing special," Sasami trailed her words off into early regret before trying to dash away from them, "and it doesn't explain where Aeka is or why the rest of the house is still quiet." Narrowed eyes could only pinch back the sour taste in her voice for so long.  
  
"I'm sorry, I tried not to be so suspicious, this has all been really nice of you, it's just-" At trail-off's end she waited for her friend's eyes to rise up and re-connect the bridge.  
  
"Don't worry about it, Sasami." Mihoshi used a gulp to boost her eyes back up in time to see the princess lower hers with a lost breath. Putting the cards face down, she reached over and griped the smaller knee.  
  
"No, really, I'm serious. I---I don't know what's happening 'exactly' but I really feel things are going to start getting better---really---really soon."  
  
Sasami looked up slowly, but the water her eyes had gathered couldn't sway the smile Mihoshi had built up for her.  
  
Softly laughing out a single tear, Sasami wiped her nose and bowed.  
  
"Thanks, Mihoshi."  
  
"Sure, now try to go easy on me this time okay."  
  
Another laugh, three more turns, and Sasami blinked back her questioning voice, smooth as a rounded and laminated edge.  
  
"He came back again, didn't he?"  
  
Mihoshi's hand dropped this time, a tiny nasal gasp floating down with the symbols and faces.  
  
"Sasami-"  
  
"I know you'll tell me the truth, Mihoshi, you have to." The Second Princess of Jurai crawled across the cards on her knees and reached for the detective's fingers.  
  
"C-C'mon Sasami, can't we just have a nice game."  
  
"What happened? Did he---did he ^hurt^ someone?"  
  
She tried to maneuver her eyes down and up into Mihoshi's but the curtain of blonde curls kept falling in the away.  
  
"Did---someone-" Hesitation undercut the difference between fear and excitement.  
  
"It'll all be over soon," Mihoshi's watery blue rose up and washed over, "that's all that they told me."  
  
The little princess gently settled back into a slouch over their fallen game.  
  
"I believe them, Sasami, I---I-I have to, ^we^ have to."  
  
No reply has a way of filling a silent house till it's dead before it's holy.  
  
"Sasami?"  
  
"Are you really Mihoshi?"  
  
Neither pink nor blue lifted from the faces on the floor. They were same at both ends like the white on the other side of them all. While time goes blank, no reply has a way of making a dead house fragile.  
  
"I---I don't know what to say."  
  
"That's okay, I know it's you Mihoshi."  
  
"You---you ^do^?" She wiped her eyes up as the little princess slowly lifted her own with a pained but playful smile.  
  
"Yeah, he never liked these kinds of games."  
  
"Oh." Solemn understanding started to sink Mihoshi's face again, till she remembered Sasami's own, introducing timid to grateful smile.  
  
"^Oh^!"  
  
The exclamation wavered into a chuckle, further shaken out by the light giggling before her. Within a few seconds they were both squealing laughter, hugging painfully. They bawled long and away into each other's shoulder, blessed release that neither of them threatened to let go.  
  
Giving up felt so warm and good as Mihoshi swayed the big girl like a mother.  
  
***  
  
A line lights straight up and down but not terribly tall. More like a bar, then more like a rectangle that should be throwing its inverse shadow into the darkness by now. Washu's silhouette wouldn't have fooled many into seeing a grown up, even in the shrunken passageway, even with arms crossed or held back and hair spreading as little as possible. The rectangle shrank back and small steps echoed into the dark. Florescent formality imitated a six-meter circle of sky just as she reached Seita's side.  
  
Restraining him at a 42.893-degree angle had seemed most fitting at the time, being neither as petty as vertical nor as lax as horizontal. Washu removed a knuckle from her lip, an arm from across her belly, and touched a few areas on one of the screens choked by the surrounding tangle of wired boxes. A few tubes traded lights for fluids from adhesive points behind his head, and fewer invested in the inflated cushions restraining his waist, ankles, wrists, and neck. The sky remained centered over the scientist as she followed some of the larger cords to scale model circuitry cities proportioned to swallow planets. Taking a portable screen from a possibly appropriate resting place, she focused on setting it ready, not at all worried about tripping as she walked back.  
  
The robotic breaths she took at his side kept her frozen mid-blink, dreamless sleep to any eyes. Within six air-trades their lungs matched to turn heartbeats green, but faces of forced calm could only get so close to reflexive life. Objectivity lifted itself over him, unflinching to failure as her jaw clenched, trembling her entire body. Only one trade this time, not matching, but long enough to beat the calm back in.  
  
"Subject has not responded to the nutrient feeds, and seems unaffected by most of the antibiotics." Washu removed a small recorder like a large bullet from a notch on the portable screen and set it in the chest pocket of her long white lab coat. Tubes swayed the same.  
  
"His metabolic and cardiovascular systems seem to be confused between a state of hyperactivity and near hibernation. Brain functions are erratic." She placed the screen where only she could read it and crossed her hands at her back. Hesitation, then both hands in the coat's lower pockets to balance the half circle pace.  
  
"The only recent records remotely similar to these symptoms were gathered from previous subject, Yosho Jurai." Washu mentioned this unimportantly but with a slight hurry as she reached outside the light to pull in a rattle of stainless steel wheels. The portable tray didn't look sturdy enough to hold a beaker much less a large collection of syringes and complexly labeled vials.  
  
"For the past---'41' and '36.23'," Washu looked closely at the corner of the portable screen then nowhere in particular around the subject, "he has remained either unconscious or unresponsive."  
  
Filling the shots properly took more concentration than usual, but if anything the jaded monotone thickened.  
  
"If you can hear me Seita, please give some signal."  
  
Twice his lungs expanded and twice they relaxed almost exactly as they had been doing thus far. The third inhale hesitated, stopped. Apart from the electronic rhythm droning otherwise, Washu's subject had expired.  
  
She looked at the equipment, making herself trust it, eyes on the lights around the flash and nothing else. Her hands hurt. They needed a higher purpose before they gave in to helping the closest thing strangle itself.  
  
"At 41 and---37.12, the subject seems to -hic-!"  
  
A feather tickled warmth into her cheeks before she slapped a heavy hand over her mouth, eyes begging 'no' at the floor. The first slip of poise dropped almost stillborn. Then into the silence, only a few forevers from being reassuring when the assassin came, a rhythm slithering up between the electric tones. Small grunts would be chuckles if they ever had the courage to come out of hiding.  
  
Washu took a steadying step back so quietly she hoped not to feel it.  
  
The sickly patches of corner crust were not going to give up their position, imbedding themselves into clenched wrinkles. Then tighter, the squalor, the fester of this less proportioned version of Seita's face began to nod forward. Laughter never so fast infectious; he was vomiting it out in no mercy and no time. Cackles choked themselves, drowning raven, chewing chalkboard, quieting down to the bog to regroup for a fouler boil.  
  
Her fist was ready, maybe bleeding but definitely ready. She held it, shaking death level with poison tipped emeralds. In a single flash little glowing knuckles would break, humble, and only be a taste of things to come.  
  
Gasping greedily at charred air, eyes still crushed inward, he was ready to bellow nails into lumps of freshly curdled blood. One note, like a sarcastic smack to one bad line, and miserable coughs were crushing his lungs. The facial tension melted soft decay around his gapping maw; he would've been curling up into himself at each bout without the restraints.  
  
Disgust and pity killed themselves unworthy, and Washu obliviously lowered her fist. Instinct waited for another outburst, but consciousness pained away for those eyes to open.  
  
More than a dozen breaths died to break even, and still it was labor till one final grasp at the glass, one swelling testament, mutinied to take over calm.  
  
Seita's eyes opened like a tilted doll.  
  
Watching him watch the angle he'd been committed to, Washu hesitantly put her short hands in deep coat pockets. She'd stopped counting, but it wasn't long before he spoke like weak and bitter drugs.  
  
"Testing."  
  
The turning step protested loudly as she closed the short distance between herself and the tray of syringes, she heard his head brace groan and tried not to let her skin cower off that he was surely staring over her shoulder.  
  
"You know Professor, it probably isn't a good idea to label your placebos so blatantly."  
  
Washu turned back to imitate unaffected, looking only at a small syringe as she tapped and tested it. A few drops of fluid landed on Seita's elbow and he moved his head slightly to watch the penetration. She heard him breath in the sensation, but figured that would be easy not to think on. Yet, as she slowly finished the dose, she felt his eyes again, up her arms, around her neck. She didn't flinch, didn't waver, but blinked calmly and wiped the hole clean.  
  
"But it ^was^ very careful of you to---'loosen yourself up' before coming down here."  
  
She took the opening; the first low-throat chuckle was hardly done before her eyes whirled up and into his. The light did not reflect well from the floor, making the imbedded crescents on his face even more pronounced. The patches of yellow on his unchanged white clothing were so mundane. His scalp and facial stubble, now too long to strike a match on, still did little to hide the shine of grease. And focusing for real, she caught and momentarily forgot to release a thin strip of skin on his lower lip as it danced on his fermented breath. The blue looked gray and the velvet sounded straw.  
  
"Do you still think I'm in control?"  
  
Washu turned to put the syringe back, mentally repeating that she had been a stone the entire moment.  
  
"No," the machine regarded another vial, "and I'm not nearly as 'loosened up' as I could be."  
  
She had almost filled the next injection when he changed to continue, cold sarcasm so much like soft acceptance.  
  
"So did you at least bring some for me?"  
  
Washu didn't turn this time as she tested the next treatment.  
  
"Surely this is a day of celebration," he trifled cynical.  
  
Turning, ready to administer the shot, she didn't even considering meeting his eyes again.  
  
"Professor Hakube."  
  
She stopped the needle centimeters away from his skin, screaming back at the very idea of hearing anything beg anything.  
  
"Look at me."  
  
If it was a trick it was too obvious and too late to reconsider; she was already letting this happen. Effective but unnecessary, the sake let her remember family and failure like surrender and vengeance. It was happening; The Ghost of Madness was a discard of weak, ugly, and vulnerable flesh, all at her mercy. And now she wanted to be done with the games, the doubt, and the crippling malice. She would look into his eyes now, 'unafraid' wanting nothing in return but 'unaffected' as she listened to him.  
  
The strangling glare wasn't the same.  
  
"It's very rude to examine a cadaver that's still talking."  
  
Again, sinister velvet was a decrepit, almost senile imitation. Still, Washu could tell that he didn't really mean it. The entire mask did nothing but tempt her violence, and poorly, pathetically.  
  
She absorbed every word to the core; nonetheless, finishing another clean injection and placing the tool back properly. She breathed once and pushed the tray back into the darkness with a readying voice.  
  
"You're not---done---yet."  
  
Walking back to the subject, she began stretching on a pair of sterile gloves and pushing her tone closer together.  
  
"Part of everyone in this house wants me to break new ground in slow and horrible deaths, but still they agreed that it was best to find out as much as possible before there was any---retribution." A cold excess of breath seemed to make her head lighter, yet she was glad to stay a statue.  
  
Looking up at nothing, he felt her gaze only because she knew he did.  
  
"It took some intense persuasion on my part." Washu allowed herself a long blink, and another ice wrap for her throat. "I offered them one of your fingers as reassurance, but the sight of the saw satisfied most of them."  
  
Three blinks were too quick and even to be reflexive as Seita crawled his eyes back down into hers. Washu felt her face hardening but had to continue while she could stop the process.  
  
"Now then, I'm at least going to get you to properly identify yourself so that---so that they can know-"  
  
Frustration clenched and stared a hole in his neck restraint. Seita continued to breath his noticeably long breaths, but Washu knew he wouldn't pass up a chance to fill in the blank, even in this condition.  
  
"If I'm something 'supernatural'."  
  
She jerked herself together, pressing her tongue against the roof of her mouth so hard it parted her teeth. Allowed only a short breath to dull the taste of condescending science, she pounded to keep her face from sharpening any further.  
  
Little more than a loll, Seita let his face turn towards her. Something swam circles under his Adam's apple, and crawled out behind his eyes, drying dead in the sun. One more half grin readied one last overflowing performance. The blatant mortality of a nasal buzz spread cracks through seductive eloquence.  
  
"If you want to know everything, Professor, you can't be afraid to ask."  
  
***  
  
Thin pinches of blood orange cotton smeared out from where the sunset should have been. Fall can creep up like a bandit, stealing away long days and warm nights. Tenchi had made a vow to admire the sunset from the height of the shrine the moment its keeper, against doctor orders and family pleas, returned to his duties. Already he'd missed it for starting up the steps too late.  
  
"The days are only going to get shorter, Tenchi." His grandfather made no attempt to conceal his approach, and it surprised him slightly to be so disappointed.  
  
"I know."  
  
Tenchi sighed his response without seeming rude, frowning at the lingering eagerness for one of his grandfather's infamous surprise attacks. He relaxed only after sneaking a few glances at the serene old face beside him. A breeze picked up and distributed the music sheets to some overanxious night insects. Lingering twilight matched their silent company.  
  
"I'm going to need someone to take over my shrine duties soon."  
  
"What?" The apprentice turned half his body, honestly believing he'd misheard.  
  
"It's time, Tenchi. I'm getting a little too old for this."  
  
"But, but ^who^? Who in the world are you going to get to come out ^here^?"  
  
His head tilted in disbelief and shrunk back in fear beneath an old knowing glance.  
  
"Grandpa, I'm not-" Tenchi began with a nervous breath of laughter.  
  
"No Tenchi, you're not," Katshuhito turned toward the horizon again, "but my nephew is."  
  
"Nephew?"  
  
Watching him take off his spectacles for a shirt polish, Tenchi caught a flash of youthful reserve in his grandfather's uncovered eyes.  
  
"Oh. I see." Tenchi looked away and down to cough up a tiny laugh.  
  
Then seriously; "But seriously, why the sudden change?"  
  
"He should be able to pick up where I left off in your training."  
  
Tenchi tried looking forward to a less old-fashioned teacher, but thoughts of training led to thoughts of violence, and thoughts of violence brought him back to morning and Washu's overly stabilized steps as she'd disappeared into her lab. Ignoring it would have taken consideration he didn't have. With one deep breath pushed and another one held, he spoke in what he hoped by now was a voice to take seriously.  
  
"Washu's still down in the lab. Alone. Again."  
  
When his grandfather didn't answer, he looked over, hoping those young eyes would be closed in contemplation.  
  
"Grandpa?"  
  
"Intelligent women are often willful, Tenchi, and they usually don't like having to repeat themselves"  
  
Tenchi readied an answer, but sucked exasperation into a clenched face instead. Arms folded, he began to chew whatever came between his teeth. Long helpless, this silence was dead but still wet, begging to be torn away but for all that might unravel with it.  
  
"It's getting dark, I should start heading home." The tension numbed his voice as he turned toward the steps.  
  
"Tell me Tenchi," Katshuhito began softly.  
  
He stopped and prepared to turn and bow apologetically for departing from his teacher's side so informally.  
  
"Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?"  
  
The expected judgment in the question was either well covered or completely replaced with an almost gentle curiosity, thus Tenchi remained frozen even longer. The only honest and available answer fell out of his mouth like a spare coin.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
He looked up to see his grandfather approach, and watched him nervously as he passed to lead the way down.  
  
"Grandpa?" Already feeling like a naive puppet, Tenchi began to match pace with his teacher. Step by timid; he began to open his mouth.  
  
"Tenchi."  
  
"Yes, grandfather." His uneasiness forgot his own question and answered with reflexive formality.  
  
"I think I'll have some drinks with your father tonight, could you go check to be sure I locked up the shrine."  
  
"Um, sure." So nervously casual felt unforgivable, Tenchi's legs still carried him back up the stairs too quickly to correct himself.  
  
---  
  
Staying calm by demand, but taking long strides just the same, Tenchi made his way across the empty and darkening courtyard. After taking every other step up to the shrine door, he reached for its handle like a boy playing his first game of doorbell-ditch. A quick rattle was more than satisfactory, and Ryoko was more than enough to startle out a mid-turn gasp. She crossed her arms at the bottom of the office steps, letting hair shadow her face. The tail of her dress swayed in a light breeze.  
  
"You know I don't like it when you sneak up on me like that."  
  
After a silent and darkened sigh, Tenchi had scolded his feet with the worn out reprimand and taken the steps slowly.  
  
A move like avoidance would be unforgivable now, so walking past her they were shoulder to shoulder for a moment. As soon as he lifted his left foot from her shadow he'd breath, but before he set down his right foot she spoke.  
  
"Well Tenchi, why didn't you?"  
  
The question boiled over in a thick scowl, spiking both feet to the ground by his organs. So many fighting stances kept the frozen pose almost natural as he waited for whatever she'd said to carry more than the shock of her voice.  
  
Tenchi's face dried out with a thin frown. If crushing his fingertips in the silence took an hour more, it would take an hour more.  
  
*Why does she always think she deserves a special answer?!  
  
*...I should have been prepared for this.  
  
*She should have the consideration to wait.  
  
*I can't do this.  
  
Breathing so much like calm people do, he lifted his head and continued toward the shrine steps, nearly choking to speak gruffly.  
  
"I already said: 'I don't know.'"  
  
Ryoko phased before he could take the first step down. He quickly dropped his focus to her elbow at the sudden burst of golden misery.  
  
"That's not good enough." The world trembled in her throat without stuttering, and stubbornness snapped to know determination. Tenchi couldn't avoid an answer any more than he could make one up, but he tried despite all he knew.  
  
"Just what do want me to say?" It sounded more impatient than he'd intended.  
  
She swallowed audible and his eyes closed helpless, opening them at a tiny and terrifying sound. Small arcs of electricity were rioting between her fingertips.  
  
"First, I want you to look me in the eye," she gulped harsh again, "I want you to look me in the eye and tell me he's really helpless."  
  
Tenchi tilted his head away from her elbow, ready to simply offer his eyes up into hers. But the weight had never been real before, it had been distinct, excruciating, and always tied to her somehow, but it had always been a watery print. Now it could kill him if he blinked. The only thing that compared was the separate fear that had gripped, moved him when he'd faced Kagato, Seita.  
  
"Washu and I carried him down to her lab ourselves."  
  
He'd wagered nearly everything on getting it out on a quick look and one breath, and now the gold reminded him of a viewing.  
  
The daughter of one of his father's friends had died, younger than he'd ever known Sasami. Having never known her or the family, it seemed strange to cry over how beautiful yet undeniably dead she looked. The rest of the service he'd cried almost uncontrollably into his mother's lap.  
  
Ryoko didn't blink and didn't ease the arcs at her fingers.  
  
"^He's^-" a barely audible wheeze gulped back on brittle blinks, "He's as frail and helpless as a sick puppy."  
  
Tenchi knew he'd dropped his head back down too eagerly, but hoarded his tiny breaths of relief while he could.  
  
*Please Ryoko, please calm down. This nightmare is so close to being over, it has to be.  
  
Ryoko floated out of his path, facing his profile. The cracks of electricity faded.  
  
Like before, Tenchi regretted his obvious sigh of relief the moment it fell and as it echoed all the way down the stairs. But if she wasn't making a sound, he wouldn't have to look at her again.  
  
It was about six steps before he thought not to count them, another when Ryoko spoke again.  
  
"You know what, Tenchi?"  
  
He turned, first his head, then only his shoulders. She sounded more casual, but he wasn't surprised to see water narrowed in her eyes. It felt like a curse and gave a burning core to the weight's encompassing return. To push back at the pain, to preserve his life like a spiny insect, he felt himself slowly glaring back.  
  
"Sometimes---" Ryoko swallowed and clenched her hands again, "you're really ^lousy^ at finishing what you start."  
  
Like a drop of molten glass in his palm, everything was very clear very quickly. He felt his eyes tightening at her again, memories unbalancing in resentment that had to be too strong to be defensive. The reply came to him faster than nature but he thought about it first, for real if for a moment. He thought about it alongside ^real^ justice, then amid ^real^ devotion.  
  
"Is Aeka still at home?"  
  
He watched her stop time and move even less, then drop everything and watch it swirl down a whirlpool. Hair by hair, her face relaxed till it looked like a doll from a craftsman who forgot to even start with indifference, leaving things blank. As she turned away, away from ^him^, Tenchi clenched his teeth. His throat stung and his head pounded, but he told himself the rising heat in the weight was cracking it. Yes, it did feel good, did feel right as she replied 'yeah, probably' like nothing.  
  
Air too hard to breathe, face too heavy to hold up in victory, Tenchi hadn't descended far enough to count or retrace his steps before Ryoko appeared again. This time he fell back like a frightened schoolboy.  
  
"If he's not dead by sunrise---"  
  
Tenchi remembered how her eyes went red under Kagato's control, how Seita's seemed ready to go white when he revealed himself like the living end. Her voice was more natural though, shaken between silk threads cutting circulation and babies in real pain. She floated down minutely closer; she'd eat him with a smile like a bomb with her name on it.  
  
"I'll haul him out of there by his ^eye sockets^." Not much louder, tighter was much worse. Her witness backed up the stairs in a crawl without looking away.  
  
"I'll melt his teeth together ^inside his head^." Eyes red any second now, her own teeth inseparable. Tenchi retraced two more steps without a thought and without any more distance between them.  
  
"Then I'll plug every-single-one of his fingers---into his ^guts^." Her elbows locked in by her hips, hands out to catch all the molten glass Tenchi could run from. Then, as he slipped and stopped retreating, she lifted her gaze and wailed it over every treetop in her span of vision.  
  
"I'm going to paint this damn forest with his ^BLOOD^!"  
  
Carnage hands spread out and clutched a deadly sun apiece. The energy threatened to break through her fingers, and she'd grab more if she wanted. Ryoko heaved like this till the memory was immortal twice. But even as the breaths seemed to relax rather than swell her rage, Tenchi didn't blink.  
  
It was almost dark when she let the lights die, but Tenchi wasn't counting or praying especially formally. He gulped so much regret at once he couldn't taste it, could barely feel himself choking when Ryoko looked at him, working up to something as she wrapped her arms around herself.  
  
Pleading and desperate whatever it was; Tenchi's move to rise phased her away before one tear could leave her face. He didn't let himself stand there for too long, he had to focus on the steps and everything.  
  
***  
  
The mattress sank around Misaki's bare knees as she brushed Funaho's hair with lazy strokes. A thin curtain billowed from the bedposts beside them.  
  
"The dreams must have stopped, you've slept soundly for many nights now."  
  
Funaho sighed and idly watched her hands twirl another brush.  
  
"They are less terrible, but---more strange."  
  
"You mean 'stranger'." Misaki put her chin on Funaho's shoulder and pressed it in with a teasing smile. Duly ignored, she sighed.  
  
"It can't be good for you to let yourself be so defeated."  
  
"For centuries, my husband has been exploiting the false death of our son."  
  
So prompt a reply, the following silence was blunt to match, Misaki's optimism retreating to be sure.  
  
"We can persuade him better than anything, but he ^is^ The Emperor of Jurai. Sister, we've been through this too many times already. And it's still careless to even speak of it."  
  
She brushed a thick lock with extra care and held her lips to its softness. They trembled to see Funaho's unchanged face through the sagging stone posture.  
  
"Times will change, and Jurai will too. One day both our children will return, we can be sure of it."  
  
Funaho caught Misaki's hand as it untangled a small hair-knot and held her cheek into it. Misaki smiled gratefully.  
  
"Then what of your visions? Are they also stranger?" Dark Earth eyes softened shut to the gentle fingers combing through her.  
  
"I still dream of Tsunami sometimes," Misaki soothed, "but that--- emptiness, it seems to frighten her less now."  
  
"Yes. I wonder, does she have a sister to comfort her as well?" Funaho asked too quietly to tell if she knew the answer, leaning back into welcoming arms.  
  
A small frown clouded Misaki's face before it was released into a tighter embrace.  
  
"She must."  
  
***  
  
Mutual interest refracts more than enough to divide opposed corners. Mutual concern reflects precisely through overlapping centers. So side-by- side, if end-to-end, two sisters watch each other watch over the other.  
  
*He is going to explain.  
  
*It would seem.  
  
*Is he going to expire?  
  
*Perhaps.  
  
...  
  
...  
  
*Is she going to understand?  
  
*Possibly.  
  
*Will she try to uncover?  
  
*She will.  
  
...  
  
*Do you want to interfere?  
  
*I do not think we should be waiting.  
  
*I do not think we should have waited.  
  
Two sisters observe, relative to place and purpose, relative to either side of blood.  
  
***  
  
Washu kept watching as they both endured another grating bout of coughs. Seita let her looked even closer, unaffected as he scraped his air back into place. Into every corner of the brittle frame, she stared till she thought she saw a scarecrow nearly obsolete long enough to be an oracle.  
  
*...afraid to ask'.  
  
She watched him reexamine the platform beneath his feet. It would keep him from pouring onto the floor if she were to disarm the restraints. Time extended parallel to the echo of his advice, gaining, then head to head.  
  
Eventually he was just breathing again, genuinely patient or genuinely uninterested in her response. This sent Washu searching down to his mouth. The cracks and discoloration were more than an average cynic would wish on a star. In searching every detail she nearly had to wake herself out loud that he was including his smile but wasn't going to laugh.  
  
*-afraid to ask'.  
  
*How can he still be so ^pompous^?!  
  
*-afraid to ask'.  
  
*Damn him  
  
Washu scanned quickly over the equipment's major parts, vital signs, and delicate areas. She stood to lift the control from her pocket and spread an abrasion between confusion and will.  
  
*Even if I am: I can't be.  
  
Without a bit of climax, or even formality to her movements, The Greatest Genius in the Universe gave the commands to undo the restraints.  
  
"I am not afraid."  
  
She watched the millimeters of his rising brow, speaking clear surprise over hisses and snaps of deflating and retracting machinery. When the process was complete her voice would be professional.  
  
"Tell me."  
  
Seita watched his wrists as he bent to massage them, nearly mesmerized by the reflexive nature of the movement. When the trance exhausted its turn he still kept his head down. Little by little, Washu noticed every limb draw in closer like illegal geometry, a fetal position standing tall.  
  
The decision further reassured itself. It was easy to explain this idea that freedom as a handout could be even more subjugating. She would agree or disagree but know before his eyes completed their crawl up her arms.  
  
*Am I trying to humiliate him?  
  
As soon as she saw the upper whites he stopped and bowed into his arms as they folded tight over his stomach and the most violent coughs. It would take longer to breath again after this. He hadn't smiled and wasn't going to laugh.  
  
*Even if I am: I can't.  
  
The way he slowly trembled a knuckle into his temple it would seem he hadn't touched himself in eons. And how he kept his eyes closed through the final breaths back to easy rhythm; Washu stretched herself skin-thin between first losing patience, or confidence.  
  
Seita opened his eyes only slightly and only for his hand as he thumbed the tip of his little finger where the majority of the nail had broken off. Confidence got to lose first as Washu could not tell if this was an attempt to stall or prepare, instead wondering if the little shard was still among the detritus in Tenchi's room.  
  
"Identity."  
  
Science leapt back into place on his word, still clenching every nerve as he slouched his voice and shoulders at the floor, more delicately massaging the severed point. Washu forgot every berserk second of resisting the reflex to look below his face with every millimeter it took him to look back into her eyes.  
  
"That's where it all comes from---and goes to." Like morbid humor suddenly not funny amid dying, he smiled a little. Though he tried seeing her as cellophane, his own visible exhaustion promised no more psychological warfare than could be waged with the pieces of a lost childhood icon.  
  
Washu frowned plain and simple impatience, but dropped everything that it struck him down so quickly, crossing one forearm across his belly to support the other as he looked into his palm.  
  
And if he ^was^ controlling the shakes in his fingers, then what? Washu took a moment to let the horrid question answer itself. Within seconds he was clearly forcing it, squeezing water from a handful of stone cold air. And if he was trying to open another portal, he knew he couldn't. Furnace betrayed, he whispered to himself with ash powder on dying smoke.  
  
"Comes from," he lowered his hand, crossing both over his stomach, lying back to look up, "and goes to."  
  
Rage stabbed ideas at her, impaling her hands as they guarded her guts; he was letting his body go before anyone had a chance to unleash their temper, and all of them were eating their instinctive insults to his sanity. Making her lungs take water and her hands demand attention, she raised the recorder's volume along with the angle of his table. The patient ignored her actions, but caught her with a human's sideways glance the moment they were still. In the next instant everything was the overly composed monotone of a determined eyewitness.  
  
"My birth name is my legal name---and my name is Nihils Shima. I was last formally employed by the Mocarri branch of Inter-world Hospital as their 'head' of psychiatry."  
  
The age of his word games flashed by too quickly to count, leaving Washu as a gasping statue in its trail of light. And Hell, in explaining itself, did in the same moment sound more like truth than faith ever could. Memories dragged their feet and threw out their hands at the sight of their journey's end. Washu closed her eyes, again hating how she would remember those first times being afraid of being right, never before hating not being able to cry. It would be easy, she knew, easy as evil to give up right now.  
  
She opened her eyes, holding her vitals out to the altar of her will. Ready for anything for real; for starters she would force herself to see the entire family on the other side of his eyes.  
  
A halfhearted grin could be deader than a mummies scowl, and whatever he knew he moved like a proud liar, retreating from face to face with his other hand this time, pressing the remaining nail into his bottom lip. Then, by a voice to match all these willfully bad imitations of former confidence, he spoke to Washu like he knew her.  
  
"You're not really ^that^ surprised, are you?"  
  
"No." The answer was unexpectedly prompt, quick to learn that pity couldn't fully leave for both sides unless hatred went with it.  
  
After seeming to take a moment to acknowledge a well-parried attack, her opponent continued more neutrally, again to a distant corner of the lab.  
  
"When I said that Kagato had needed my help studying the dimensional tear," he tilted his head into a slow blink, "I never said that I had more than a rudimentary knowledge of such things."  
  
Freshly, if violently cleared, Washu's mind took this next confession like a mild aftershock of the first. With a quick yet controlled frown she let the impulsive question out to care for itself.  
  
"So why would he abduct you then?"  
  
The suspect endorsed a smooth breath that only helped the interrogator rediscover her impatience.  
  
"The accounts of my relations with Kagato were accurate, but simply incomplete."  
  
Arms folded and eyes narrowed, Washu let herself pace a bit.  
  
"It still doesn't compute, Kagato was power-mad enough, but he'd have never even tolerated a ^shrink^."  
  
Washu caught the side of his smile and a tiny laugh through his nose. She wondered at the layers and angles tracing back to being amused now by such a semi-derogatory term?  
  
"Yes, he considered my field to be a counterproductive joke, and told me so before he explained his motives."  
  
"Then why?" Washu preferred and perfected her calm in quick purges, almost needing another for the length of the next pause.  
  
"How ironic that my name still means nothing to your memory." Humorlessness examined itself, then demanded the report be absorbed immediately. "Try to understand, Professor Washu Hakube, at the time I was a noted authority on the therapeutic treatment of anxiety and depression."  
  
"^Depression^?" Washu felt her eyebrows collide over the broken line of her insect's whisper.  
  
"I was skeptical myself, though he quickly assured me that the problem was entirely coincidental. I suggested a number of pharmaceutical solutions, but he hated the very idea of pills even more."  
  
Biting down, Washu's head tilted forward at some unusual placebo for balance.  
  
"His chronic impatience made the first few sessions rather difficult, but I eventually taught him a few calming exercises and some ways to navigate away from routes to---'negative self perception'."  
  
The weak laugh broke thorough unexpectedly, hissing out through her teeth as she shook her head.  
  
"All this time, that maniac was just depressed."  
  
Washu lectured herself, decapitating the laugh with its own momentum. She stared hard at the subject again and had to tighten; reflexive comparisons weren't supposed to move in slowly like this. Escaping the thought, the frost spreading over quicksand, took a mental tongue bite and something else to think about. She checked the monitors again and was able to frown more naturally.  
  
"Actually, he was correct that the cause was purely external."  
  
"Hm?" Understandably distracted by the data, she killed herself to ignore it so that he might forget it. The explanation's new angle was more than enough, though the bitter aftertaste of confusion still lingered.  
  
"He was at first hesitant to talk about it in detail, but eventually couldn't dismiss the connection."  
  
Washu glared in suspicion to stand guard alongside her curiosity.  
  
"Once he'd forced himself out of the initial instinct to run screaming from it---"  
  
Prepared enough for having little warning, Washu let her eyes meet his. And she'd been too quick to accept his defeat. There was enough oblivion left in him for one more petrifying glare swirled out on a cold croon.  
  
"---its mere presence would crawl in a malady of emotion like a degenerative radiation.  
  
"The portal." Realization flashed out beneath Washu's breath on another dirty cloud of raw memories.  
  
Those first impressionable days were charged; she'd replaced suspicion with fascination like there was no end in sight. They'd laughed away any sign of small-mindedness like it was threatening to come back into style. Sasami had laughed the most, free and sweet.  
  
The reassurance had been gentle and wise, it was unnerving simply because it was different, everyone would know that by now. The only peasant's thought she'd kept around through oblivion's innocent appearances was the easiest. But why settle for thinking that it was 'looking back'?  
  
Washu kept close watch over the fold of her arms, trying not to listen to the machine's pace and volume. For some reason, accepting that she couldn't ignore the feel of his stare made it easier.  
  
*He likes watching me make the connections on my own.  
  
*He's waiting for me to jump ahead---wants me to bite off the metal points of his fork before I've finished what's in my mouth.  
  
*Still, this must be bigger to him than anything he's dealt out before. He'll want to make it special, whatever the explanation is.  
  
*It must be the last kick for him to see me shy away from new knowledge.  
  
*So...  
  
She only moved her legs as she rose from the chair.  
  
*So I can't rush in. If he gets what he wants he'll open up---and then he'll realize there's nothing he can do with it.  
  
The message sent to put her best foot forward never reached her knee and didn't lift her eyes on the way back.  
  
*No.  
  
*Even if I am, I can't be. This is about science. This time it is. This is about the truth.  
  
She finished walking over to stand directly in front of him, warming up by imagining her head kept down at the same angle he needed to see her.  
  
"So it affected him too, and you were just there to---keep him focused."  
  
No answer served as no argument.  
  
"But he eventually decided you'd make a better guinea pig than a comfort blanket."  
  
The machine was loud, but she could hear their silence beneath it.  
  
"And, according to your observations, the only ^physical^ effect of excessive exposure to this dimension is actually---,"she began to pace to quicken the appropriate words, "an increase in genetically enhanced abilities."  
  
She looked at his hands on the next pace back, the one without the nail must have been up at his mouth again.  
  
"And apparently this effect can be ^accelerated^---accelerated, or ^reversed^."  
  
The pacing scientist stopped, ready to look up into his broken eyes with a reinforced will, already speaking before his mouth came into view.  
  
"Then how-"  
  
He was pinching his sinus, slouching into his hand. His eyelids and jaw twitched to close tighter. The pain was shiny on his skin. Again the same odor came back like it was fresh, and in wrinkling her nose Washu narrowed her eyes to see his jaw chattering. The fear was wet around his mouth.  
  
It happened sometimes, her nose and lips would feel raw as if the air had suddenly turned especially caustic. Washu felt her face go limp and noticed that she wasn't blinking when she reached without regarding her hand. Rattle and cold, metal and glass, then the syringe rose up into her field of vision, staying out of focus.  
  
*I could break him. I wouldn't even need any tools.  
  
A curdling wheeze slopped into his throat and his hands tightened. The empty one was still like a claw reaching for his heart, but obviously just reaching to hold his other arm in a self-pitiless embrace.  
  
*I could do it now.  
  
His jaw was tightening vicious and too big for his face. Even crippled mute in its eve, she recognized the laugh from her dreams, from Ryoko's.  
  
*But I've gone through all the arguments on either side of it. None of them work.  
  
She imagined him phasing backwards into the machines. Her ears would clog with rot at the world of his voice. Her eyes would shrivel like heated rubber as he buried her in a desolation of wires and tubes.  
  
*None of them work.  
  
Washu turned back to her chair, leaving her imagination to crawl after her ankles, wretched, good as dead by so much comparison. Checking the recorder in her pocket, lowering the volume of the monitors, she folded her hands and waited for his next coughing fit.  
  
He did, and in less time was breathing evenly again.  
  
*Because he's not done yet.  
  
"By the way," she blinked almost naturally as he glared back, sucking out the leftover fumes of his drained heaven, "I've no intention of referring to you as anything---but 'Seita'."  
  
Washu began to doubt the lack of expression on her face as the patient forgot his own. Her voice suffered for it, wavering only a little, but obviously tightening to correct.  
  
"Now you---you have to defy most of the physical laws in the universe by explaining how a dimension, this apparent proof of a true 'void'-" she wetted her throat and eyes, cleaned her slate, "how it can grant, and then suddenly ^revoke^ power."  
  
She let go, closing her eyes for a deep breath, encouraged to see his non-expression unchanged.  
  
"However you plan to do this, whatever your distant past may be, it would be unforgivable, impossible to ever consider you as a contributor to medicine---or any field of science."  
  
Seita blinked, longer then longer, then lifting hardly more than half of his vision.  
  
He looked so ugly, Washu finally let in the thought. The rodent- black stubble was ready to rattle like dead reeds in the wind, the sickly skin still piled like old white wax beneath his eyes, and almost every proportion now seemed to stop short or linger. She saw through his sweat stains and remembered having him and his garments cleaned. There were no tattoos, no noticeable scars, and she thought about this and how she'd probably poorly prepared herself to see them.  
  
But the blue was still waiting, unshaken from the throne despite the court's changes. Washu thought again without thinking; how could they still be the same eyes? How could he still seem to be waiting for something from me?  
  
And thinking while watching without looking for it, the answer fell flat out again.  
  
"But you don't know 'how'; you only know 'why'."  
  
His eyes opened all the way, and he was young. Washu made fists against her tears, letting each hateful memory back to guard against whatever he was about to share, whatever it was that had let a talented doctor make himself in this image.  
  
*Speak or nothing now, Washu.  
  
"Isn't that right," she pulled her head back a little, trembling less, "Seita?"  
  
His eyes dropped to the floor, and the sudden movement almost gave Washu a start.  
  
"It really would be more cohesive...easier, to ^show^ you rather than ^tell^ you."  
  
The movement back into her eyes was expected, but the fear was not, not his, not like this. She'd seen people swallow their terror before, even spit it back out at whatever was attacking them, but no one had ever violated it before. He'd made his fear a supple victim in restraints, subjecting it, degrading it.  
  
"But I can't."  
  
Before Washu's fists gave way he lifted his own limply, not especially trying to arch his fingers perfectly. He narrowed his eyes down at the steeple, speaking loudly enough to be heard by the closest person.  
  
"I really can't."  
  
The following silence gave Washu a chance to choose between calm and dead.  
  
"You are done dwelling on your machine's failure to put me where I am now."  
  
A silk ribbon wrapped around her head with each ghost of his voice. Her teeth would crack any minute to cut it.  
  
But she'd finished with that, done that childishness in like a monster would kill a child if it could.  
  
"You've been forcing yourself to approach this situation differently. And that's good."  
  
Seita looked over his fingertips with Seita's look of enraptured and crippling influence.  
  
"Because this has nothing to do with vengeance...or pity."  
  
He swallowed loudly and pressed a tremble into his fingers.  
  
"My ^will^ has-"  
  
The next word, or its vacant space, closed his eyes. Washu stepped forward and regretted it, simply trying to hear him better. She cursed her lingering reflexes and the day that Seita was born. He leaned back, lowered his hands, and opened his eyes again moments later, already looking over Washu's head.  
  
"And so I've only my testament."  
  
A shiver and a laugh attacked his jaw in secret, but Washu could see, and was ready with a stern sanity when he blinked to look back down at her. Seita smiled a nervous tick of Seita's smile.  
  
"Because this has nothing to do with loss...or generosity."  
  
***  
  
Sasami and Mihoshi stepped out onto the porch, rubbing their arms for the wind that received them. They both exaggerated their shivers almost playfully without looking at each other. From a solemn gaze shared across the empty field, Sasami noticed Aeka sitting in the swing-bench close by them. With a guardian on either side she couldn't see much more than a quiet profile.  
  
"Oh! I---uh, there you are, Aeka." Sasami tried to recover.  
  
"Hm?" Mihoshi glanced over drearily. "Oh-hey! Aeka, I didn't even see you there!"  
  
Aeka lowered her head to close her eyes and might have been considering a frown. Seeing this, Sasami shifted her weight from foot to foot, thinking of what not to say.  
  
"You missed the sunset." Softly stated, it only brought her company down a few confused levels.  
  
"Oh." Sasami lowered.  
  
"Well, you can still kind-of see it." Mihoshi put her hand over her eyes and squinted.  
  
Aeka gave them as long as they needed to catch up to her silence. The wind never subsided but hadn't grown colder yet.  
  
"Would you like to come and sit with me?"  
  
After a few blinks back to life, the youngest minds bounced the soft tone and its meaning off each other. An easy enough decision, they decided she'd been speaking to both of them and sat down at the same time.  
  
The bench's creaks cut into the would-be soothing wind. Waves of the tall grasses remained even, unconflicted and uninteresting. Sasami looked up at Azaka, then over at Kamadake, realizing how long it might still be till she was ready to speak to her sister, remembering how, on only a few distant occasions, the guardians' capacity for stillness and silence had deeply unnerved her.  
  
"Sasami," Aeka struck into the silence moments before it could have been peaceful, "do you know what is happening today?"  
  
The younger princess griped her knees, not terribly afraid of crying, thus frustrated and determined to downplay it when she did. She gave Mihoshi the most reassuring glance she could, even if the detective was hiding her eyes in her own lap.  
  
"Washu has him down in her lab again," Sasami didn't look over at Aeka, but did keep her head high, "something happened and now he can't do any of the things he used to."  
  
Aeka remained motionless.  
  
"I made Mihoshi tell me the rest---I'm sorry." She added minutely.  
  
Less considerate for letting another silence build up, and harsher for muffling her emotions with so much formality, Aeka also steadied her gaze but kept it from her sister.  
  
"Yes." She breathed only once.  
  
"Now, I know that I've told you this before, but I want you to listen to me as closely as you can."  
  
Lip trembled, then bit, Sasami looked down and up with some strength and a mouth almost ready to fill in what she knew her sister would say.  
  
"None of this has been your fault, Sasami. I want you to remember this above everything else."  
  
The silence managed to reach towards a comfort level again, despite Sasami's efforts to respond, regardless of Mihoshi's withdrawal.  
  
"^Tenchi^." Aeka whispered to herself and pulled up the surrender of the other girls.  
  
Their host was walking through the grass towards them, his shrine uniform flapping idly over his low shoulders.  
  
Sasami tried to smile when she realized she couldn't wave, and hoped the others were doing the same.  
  
Tenchi was looking at them without a line of relief. As he came closer Aeka realized that he was anxious, if less than hopeful for comfort, and was looking only at her.  
  
***  
  
If he didn't pull it off, she would.  
  
Washu had watched every one of his fingers take its turn, twice, at caressing the remaining nail. Closely engrossed, Seita might very well know every microscopic detail of his skin. He also might have found the perfect distraction, delay, and chisel for Washu's nerves. The rage was waiting for her to get careless or obsessive, so it felt right to absently scratch her eye. At the crack of his knuckles a finger froze on her eyelid, ready to make a funny face if ever she was.  
  
"Do you remember when I recounted returning to my old home?"  
  
Asked simply enough, for a ghost, Washu didn't let any phantoms slow her face as she looked up and ready to reply. He was holding his arms with his head down again. The subdued posture stole her voice long enough to know he wasn't expecting it.  
  
"I hadn't been gone from it for quite so long as I suggested," he breathed away commitment and criticized himself without pity or apology, "that was a rather ^base^ deception."  
  
Washu wasted a deep breath preparing for a response she didn't have or need.  
  
"The few people I'd known personally ^were^ gone, but this only served as further free rein to tracking down Kagato and-"  
  
*If he chuckles to himself like this one more time...  
  
"I followed trade routes," he bit a high notch into his air, "cruisers headed toward the kind of wonders he liked to collect. But even through all the beautiful sights and my freedoms, I began to feel a bit discouraged, a bit like a ghost."  
  
He lifted his head enough to show her his deadweight frown, or to have it stop him from meeting her eyes.  
  
"I started searching in random directions, mentally shooting my perception through an estimated number of light years, then retracing my path. Although I was fairly good at keeping track of my location, I eventually--- I eventually lost my place."  
  
Lowering his head again, continuing before Washu could decide which position was least unnerving.  
  
"I took off in a blind rage, searching so rapidly that stars, then whole galaxies blurred into a fantastic mass of silver and amber slivers. I kept mentally commanding more speed long past the physical capacity of any ship. Then the slivers began to thin, darkening until there was nothing but black silence, and me still trying to cut through it."  
  
A quick smile and a short breath for nothing gained and nothing left.  
  
"It turned white."  
  
Emeralds in the fists of brilliant hands turned darker for pressure at the sudden movement. Seita's head pounded back, eyes remembering in the lights above them were decadent with awe.  
  
"I didn't see it in the distance, there wasn't any gradual period of gray, just a transition back to the same surroundings Kagato had first left me in."  
  
Peeling back cracking lips, Seita barred the grind of his distinctly clean teeth and tilted his head slightly for not being able to cower back any farther. Washu wondered at the vividness of his memory and churned at the possibility of sharing.  
  
"The change was so abrupt that I probably would have had a violent reaction, if I'd still been able to feel my body.  
  
"I stopped."  
  
He withdrew his lips inward, wincing at so many things, speaking too quietly again.  
  
"It was like throwing myself upward, just reaching the sky, and then plummeting back."  
  
Hardly a laugh gave him hardly more than a cough, but kept his eyes closed.  
  
"But my curiosity has always been legion," he drooled out a smile, "so I willed myself forward again."  
  
Washu felt the tiny vibration of his trembling chin in the fibers of her skull.  
  
"And back in the white---I turned around."  
  
Terror won, turning cruel, cranking his eyes open ceremoniously and spreading them over the childlike first of the chosen faithful.  
  
"And I had done it. I---could ^see it^---an immeasurable avalanche, chaotic black spreading over empty white, spreading towards me." Dry air trembled in his boggy throat till it took on residue.  
  
"My initial shock became quaint as intuition propelled me in an inverse retreat, the neutral ground building me up as the universe-"  
  
Seita's smile never had a chance beyond his barred teeth.  
  
"^Shrank^!"  
  
Washu did not blink, or waste time congratulating herself on a solid prediction as Seita's cheeks drug, eyes fluttered, and mouth tried to stay closed.  
  
"Eventually--- all the hidden dimensions of existence---I could've covered them with my hand like a melting piece of faux fruit," he bit his lip back into a manic smile, "^like an oozing ink stain^!"  
  
Soft plastics moaned to the lolling sway of his head and the silent chuckles jerking his torso.  
  
"Physics---almost archaic; it was larger and more complex than anyone would ever know. Entropy---almost irrelevant; it was ever growing. And I-- -I had made it to the god's-eye-view."  
  
His nose whistled louder than a fading voice and he winced tighter than withdrawn lips.  
  
"But..." he managed to speak just clearly enough for someone who'd decided not to hear anything else, "I was alone."  
  
He hugged himself for a violent strangle.  
  
"I orbited that little bobble over and over, maintaining my distance and its size. But there were no voices, no revelations."  
  
Drain-doubled exhaustion, his voice had to crawl awhile.  
  
"So," he angled his head down, staring dead into her eyes, "I turned again, keeping the universe behind me."  
  
Hesitantly, Seita looked back into the light above them, eyes smoldering to turn the oceans of essence into wasted ether.  
  
"I was not the chosen, not the ambassador of enlightenment."  
  
Washu blinked for necessity after he threw down his blinders to better tear them open past the seams.  
  
"I was the ^accident^, the ^mistake^!" His over-eyes sagged into a delirious grin and calm. "The imperfection...the inescapable potential for error."  
  
Though he seemed to relax the physical grip on himself, he squirmed to somehow escape exposure. He swung his head to the side again to huddle back into his neck.  
  
"And so, I had nothing left but to make my presence known. I concentrated, not on my body, or voice, but on my presence. It was rather like a necessary inversion-" some strength massaged the tension from his neck, "'inversion of meditation', focusing on everything that I was, my memories and foresights and all the scattered debris I could summon forth, and out again."  
  
It was common to maintain a level of cold for sterility in a medical room. Washu wondered if she'd been excessive, or was being immature.  
  
"At least in space, in existence, you can look into that blackness and know there's some speck of dust or clashing asteroid out there. But, when I looked at that pure, and perfect void-  
  
Seita swallowed.  
  
"Perhaps I was not especially hopeful to begin with, as it didn't strike me as any great injustice to receive no reply."  
  
He closed his mouth tightly and tilted his head forward, submerging in the haunting frailty of recognized delusions.  
  
"And then I relaxed. And then I gave up."  
  
Washu followed his eyes over to some equipment she'd neglected to keep out of sight, then bent invisibly to see more of his expression.  
  
It was Seita. No more doubt or detail to be considered, and every memory to support. This was the life that had wielded madness over all she cared for. The singed voice carried the sickly form, the form beneath the lingering gleam of deception that swirled into a roar of glory. She had failed to escape. The wavering moments of deliverance had been naive. If he revealed this as the next great 'session' she would deserve her pain. Stupid. How could she have considered, even conceived any direction of pity? All these pauses for breath and changes in posture, even the most convincing flare of emotion in his eyes couldn't be anything more than spiteful vanity.  
  
Washu didn't bother hiding her shivered arms or holding up her shouldered stone of a mind. She stared to the place the blue would fall, crashing open white, and hollowing out her will.  
  
*Stupid.  
  
*Now, here he comes.  
  
*Tenchi...Ryoko, forgive me.  
  
"It was not an epiphany."  
  
Seita's mortality looked back at her without staring, without penetrating or smothering. Surrender, like sincerity, could soften, but his eyes couldn't help but reflect something more appropriate, and believable. Washu swallowed his helplessness; while victims claimed offense and champions met defeat with honor, the few true monstrosities could impale their capacity for ambition and apology on the same star.  
  
"It was not a revelation."  
  
He subtly pulled her eyes up to the lights with his.  
  
I didn't 'feel', or 'just know' it. I ^embodied^ it.  
  
Washu jerked her head at the strange vibration and found Seita's fists trembling at his sides.  
  
"And-was-knowledge.  
  
"And-was-power.  
  
"They were bastard infants after what filled me past the atom."  
  
Seita carefully, though with a direct and unaffected spread of fingers, grasped for the largest sides of his head, holding everything to a quiet polished rasp.  
  
"I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip my jaw apart like a pile of flawed pearls strung on stale jelly. I wanted my life spread before me, old meat on indestructible metal, uninspired, and wasted. The death I deserved, was the same cruelest irony that the lowest life earned, only I would have the one hell of ^knowing^ its approach."  
  
Washu blinked the pain from her eyes, not thinking how on earth she could have left her gaze on a light for so long, just trying to listen calmly.  
  
"All my will groveled; if I could just block it out, escape---if I could just close-my-eyes-"  
  
Heavy breaths pushed up to keep his vision unflinching.  
  
"I'd never been able to blink on the inside, and I'd forgotten, till I made my own darkness. The sudden haven startled me open again."  
  
*If he grips himself any tighter I'll have to-  
  
"I---was then ^acknowledged^, allowed ^my^ ^self^. My body was sensually present and alive, yet untouched by matter or time. My thoughts and memories swirled to the tips of my teeth like a warming drink."  
  
Tearing raw and brittle through sharpened throats, he again quickened the furnace beneath his gaze to smother the light above them.  
  
"This stray stain, for an insurmountable breath, recognized and cradled by the ^precursor to existence^, an emptiness that needed-nothing...but had ^embraced^ ^me^!  
  
Stabbing routine, one coughed and both tensed through the silence.  
  
"Perception is nothing till it is returned, and gifts are shackles till their price is known!  
  
Washu's eyes widened and walled up as the bitter, isolated superiority swung down on its thin supports to drive her down.  
  
"And there was no hesitation, for there was no bargain. It was never a matter of being 'persuaded'." Seita swallowed and eased out his hands, giving life to keep his face level after letting stilts sway like halos.  
  
"I was-not a willing victim, and I am-not a dissatisfied customer. The agreement was sealed to the envy of fate, by the imbedded, 'natural' chaos and brilliance I'd-lived-to-take---for the infinity and perfection that waited-to-reclaim. As Oblivion's intentions were blank, so my desires were clear."  
  
He reached out, and up, and as tight as stoically refused decay.  
  
"I turned on the universe. And with its white gloves over my ^own^ ^hands^, I prepared to grasp existence, to hold everything, only to then will myself without and apart, imperceptible, weaving back into the first and final perception."  
  
Drained fangs tried to sneer menacingly and managed to convey his horrid taste into Washu's mouth. Unyielding irises still held their own in holding out the end of forgiveness.  
  
"And I knew this 'everything' for what it was: a tolerated accident, a curious experiment left to its own easily dismantled designs. The angles of life are ^nearly^ uncountable, yet they will never reach infinity, and are farther still from perfection.'  
  
A little extra curl milked a little more venom to dry the irises.  
  
"I had suspected all along. But of course I'd always shied, always cowered behind the formality of needing...'more', 'more' ideas, 'more' of an answer. Yet this ^stain^ was there, plain as life, making space seem no more or less than the space it occupied. And with each growth this tumor gripped me anew. The nature and nurture of my capacities, achieved and implanted, all came together, transmutating my existence till my quarrel with Kagato seemed like such a quaint and ironic little game."  
  
Pitiless blue shut in forced and exploited ecstasy, a deep inhale shivering like an overwhelming perfume to obscure hypothermia.  
  
"I had bathed in the light before the darkness. I had danced past the universe's boundaries; it was time for me to know its depths."  
  
He began to smile down on her, but it quickly collapsed back into a sarcastic smear of pale rubber, black stubble; sickly grayed spite.  
  
"And oh how I 'plunged', wallowing and climaxing in the varied minds of victims and hosts alike, enraptured that I would hold the sanity of all existence in my hand, one day able to reshape every angle of consciousness. Don't you see, Professor? Science, even perverted science, can never, and should never be erased---repented, apologized and begged away. These...'sessions' were necessary because they have never been so possible.  
  
Washu watched him flatten himself back into the supports, catching the skin of his balance after reaching for her air. She decided to breathe when the hacking coughs reached their apex, but felt left out of the decision to relax when his expressions turned their most violent. However tight the tendons, they were small, and however abrasive the voice, it was infected.  
  
"Mark! Me! 'Little Washu', I ^am^ The Ghost of Madness. I ^am^ the enslavement of nightmares, the living age of compassion's inversion! I am the self-and-chosen ^ambassador of oblivion^! I've sculpted---drawn out centuries of obscured and twisting knowledge, a body of work that could-"  
  
Trembling down from his eyes, out from his jaw.  
  
"-transform all of science-"  
  
Scraping the spoiled rind to light on what words could have been.  
  
"-^into a harem of drooling lunatics^!"  
  
Each exhale had been pulling the words thinner, cruelty's irony to make a fading tyrant speak like puberty. And Seita made to glare terror, and Washu realized that each time before he'd looked at, through, but never into her eyes. She watched the net of woven diamonds, so long supporting and cutting itself for his face; it disintegrated like a copper shroud, caressed to dust after eons under the sea.  
  
Seita jerked into himself, imploding with exertion as he gave out to desperation, fingers arched before his face, trembling and slipping from their holds in not quite perfect sync. For something that had mocked time for so long, the last ditch collapsed inward pitifully quick. Washu let this thought soften her entire body as her subject began to lower his hands, draining back to less than the hollowed stone he'd begun his witness from.  
  
"And I've 'nothing' to show for it."  
  
Waiting to see where his hands came to rest, waiting too long for them to find a better place than beneath his arms, Washu tried, harder than she wanted, against her disapproval of the saying, to 'not think, and just listen'.  
  
Back again to the initial fear at the realization of her own mind, back again to the terror pouring out from the first glimpse of Seita's 'real' eyes, and back again to these, his all but cowering remains. The oil shimmer like the shiver, like the stench would be soon; it matched the records and warnings on the machines behind him. It helped her to not think and just listen, even if that meant speaking before he stretched the next moment to mute himself completely.  
  
"Go on."  
  
Washu adjusted her knees to the new gravity brought by the echo of what could not have been a motherly tone. She watched Seita for any response, still fighting back images of voices and vigils, countless societies and their scientists, countless geniuses and their utopias. They were all screaming into deaf skies as they fell from their mountains and sank into their seas, dragging their podium ships down, or hoarding them away in sterile rubber.  
  
Seita did not respond, but spoke in the perfect tone to confirm he was continuing unaffected, and that it didn't matter that Washu would know better. It didn't bother her that he kept his head down, or spoke again only just loudly enough for her recorder, but please, she begged as if joined with Ryoko's mind, please don't let your expression dry solid like that.  
  
"The 'how' was in the 'why', Washu, if it hadn't already occurred to you. My research is funded by its methods as much as by its results."  
  
Not caring if he was pausing for a calm breath or a choking cough, Washu's mind chewed to one side whether the knowledge about to be passed, purged, would be worth the ordeals her family, the universe, had already endured. She swallowed it whole without a flinch, back to watching him look up at the light.  
  
"All I ^have^, and all I ^know^ from my relationship with oblivion, stems from base analysis."  
  
He closed his eyes and gripped himself to the rise in the machines' activities. His voice struggled harsher.  
  
"By oblivion's encouragement, by my ambition, again: know madness by wielding it, and again: control consciousness by wielding it. Time under matter...matter under life...life under will...will under thought...thought...under consciousness. Delusion, chaos, madness---to doubt...doubt to apathy...apathy...to the fall of the sentient will...to the fall of consciousness, the fall of existence."  
  
Something heavy fell back down Seita's throat by sheer surprise, the sweat was darkening larger patches on his clothing.  
  
"If---through my sessions---apathy can spread to dissolve---and, if there is some force...some authority behind even the precursor to existence...if the 'experiment' folds on itself...it will be cancelled."  
  
Emeralds watered, ill prepared that the search might finally show an end's corner. Jagged stars of ice raged through Washu's vessels. She wanted to yank him down by the collar, rip his eyes open with her own, find some reassuring deceit. Not ready to reopen once her visions held each other shut, she listened for his movements beneath the tones of inefficient medicine.  
  
Remembering those few looks directly into the portal, the white behind the blue, she hated that she'd known, that he was telling her. So much was too late. He was hanging his head back towards her now; she'd look up without thinking, and she hated that too. She'd been right to be terrified during his rise, and was wrong now to fear his fall. There was no protection against his gaze, even when it was begging her for defeat. No wall, no guard capable or necessary as the appointed cure for Will surrendered to its own medicine.  
  
"There, I've given you oblivion and myself---nothing. Whatever else;" the last of life hourglassed through his teeth as he took as little breath as possible, "it was that night---when I would have strengthened beyond my--- when---when I met Tsunami---I finally accepted---was able to realize that my work would never be my own."  
  
Washu Tried to look away, but all she could do was open her eyes wider, even after he closed his own.  
  
"And I tell you, for no humanity or ambition, that there was only one, only a single desire that ran deeper than my nearly unaffected exchange of creation for control."  
  
Wincing at the pain in his cough didn't feel appropriate, and it hurt like swift punishment. So Washu opened her eyes, bitter weak as a child when an illusion dies; Seita's mania hung over her with frayed strings and tarnished mirrors exposed.  
  
"It must have remained subconscious, in hiding for so long---from the moment I saw the truth of existence."  
  
When before he'd looked down from her eyes rather than for himself, it hadn't been as obvious. Now this was torment too, and again Washu couldn't cry, and that was the same.  
  
"In all my searches, I never found a being, an entity, nothing singularly composed of truth and compassion. Even Tsunami, at one with an innocent child, and even her sister, at odds with all not under her power, neither of them are as truly omnipotent as their followers might think them, might ^hope^ them to be."  
  
Another thick gulp of nothing tried to dislodge the lump in his throat. Washu had quieter and better, if short, luck.  
  
"No, plenty of angles, but no centers."  
  
Seita pried his eyes up again and looked at her like a strange reflection. He wanted to turn away again, but he merely spoke on in plain resignation.  
  
"This is an entirely inappropriate word for it, but I took---'comfort' in the idea that I would embody, would become---the equivalent of---an entity of pure---"  
  
Failed, falling without moving more than closing his eyes again, and Washu knew she couldn't follow him, no longer capable of another encouraging word, an empowering hatred. Another intruding memory came and left all but stillborn, there were animal specimens in it.  
  
When her subject spoke again he seemed almost ready.  
  
"I inspired myself; I would become a being so threatening to the continuation of sentient life...so as to demand the emergence...^of an opponent^."  
  
He opened his eyes on her then, pushing out ending words in a desperate grab. The effort strangled him with his own lungs, but he fought it back long enough to loathe out his reiteration, black soiling white, bleeding through both sides.  
  
"^If there was not an 'ultimate good' in existence, I would create the need for one^."  
  
Washu expected a physical climax over anything to reply, but he just pressed his head back and eyes in, neck strained to hold his trembling jaw. The machines were giving her what sounded like her last warning, but she told herself not to think, just to listen.  
  
And Seita gave up everything without surrender or apology, giving everyone what they wanted and his smug half smile.  
  
"But you can take power and comfort now, Professor Hakube. The path to my 'opportunity' was a lonely accident---to the extent that 'first' and 'last' are all but irrelevant; the conditions that made it possible would be nearly impossible to recreate."  
  
A slightly more than invisible measurement increased his half of the smile.  
  
"But you still want to ^try^---to ^succeed^."  
  
By shock and exhaustion it was impossible to tell if he'd given her insight or foresight. And as he set his head back and closed his eyes into invisible breaths, the second, silent part should have given more of a clue than it did.  
  
"^You will^."  
  
First staring long and silent at him and himself, Washu adjusted the table more horizontally as she walked past him. She looked at the machines' data and only read it once.  
  
***  
  
Ryoko had been officially declared 'asleep' up on the rafter. The other family members, even the heads, were drinking their tea in unwritten silence.  
  
Mihoshi curled up in an afghan, holding the warm cup tightly to fight off the autumn wind's chill if she couldn't hide from its murmur. Sasami mimicked her almost unnaturally, save for the unresponsive cabbit weighing down her smaller blanket.  
  
Nobuyuki pored his father in law another saucer of sake, having gone the long hours of the evening without asking when anyone wanted more, and never being incorrect. The lines of age hung out in the open with dignity, spectacles neatly folded away.  
  
Tenchi sat next to Aeka, sipping his tea. She continued the easy part of her crochet and matched his decision to look at anything but the other people in the room. Having been very good, in context, about not burdening the clock's speed with extra glances, she allowed herself a quick check. Her eyes moved back down, and hesitantly to Sasami, to Tenchi, and to her dozing sister again.  
  
"Sasami, I think it's time to go to bed."  
  
"It's over."  
  
The entire living room swung themselves at the closet without rising, or tumbling over. Head down, hands crossed behind her, Washu stood away from the lab door as it took its time to swing closed again.  
  
Ryoko moved too slowly not to tremble as she peeked over the side and down on her mother. Unusually large hair for a child sounded like plastic bags and thin branches amid the wind outside. Washu didn't notice as Tenchi almost lifted his shoulders to stand as she passed him.  
  
"Washu?"  
  
Science didn't look at the aged heads of the family as she picked up the bottle and a saucer from them. Her eyes mirrored the bottle, but blank paper sounded just like it looked.  
  
"I said 'it's over'."  
  
She filled the saucer and drained it in the same long second before handing the paper to less than a machine.  
  
"He's gone."  
  
***  
  
Suspicion and patience and rate of interest.  
  
Much abandoned and two-thirds done.  
  
Investments take power like surrender has comfort.  
  
Price pretend that it's broke but still fun.  
  
-ZJS  
  
Author's Note: ---------------------  
  
*The final Verses, 11 through 15, will be included in Sanctuary and Asylum -99- 


End file.
